Issue 194

Musicians in one genre are often compared to those in another. But for a fiddler like Vassar Clements, who was equally gifted in bluegrass, jazz, rock, and country, the comparisons cross-pollinate. So, he was variously called the Miles Davis of bluegrass, the Isaac Stern of country, and the Count Basie of the fiddle. What matters is that he was the one and only Vassar Clements, and he’s always worth listening to.

He was born in 1928 in the town of Kinard, on Florida’s Panhandle. When he started fiddle as a child, the first thing he learned to play were big band numbers, but soon he became enthralled with the hillbilly fiddle sound of Chubby Wise. By the time Clements auditioned for Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Mountain Boys in 1949, he was skilled enough to be invited on tour and into the studio with the father of bluegrass.

Clements stuck mainly with bluegrass into the early 1970s – he was a member of the Virginia Boys and the Sunny Mountain Boys, among other groups – but all that time he was playing in a style with far wider ramifications. His improvisations had a jazz sound unlike what anyone else was doing in Nashville. In the 1970s, other artists started to notice. He was hired as a session musician on thousands of singles and albums, for artists as wide-ranging as John Hartford’s “newgrass” Dobrolic Plectral Society to the Allman Brothers, Hot Tuna, and the Monkees.

In the early 1970s, Clements made several live jam-style recordings with members of the Grateful Dead, released over 20 years later as a three-volume set called Old and In the Way on the Acoustic Disc label.

Clements’ solo albums tended to feature the distinctive harmonic and rhythmic blend he called “hillbilly jazz.” His sound can’t be mistaken for anyone else’s. He died in 2005, at the age of 77. 

Enjoy these eight great tracks by Vassar Clements. 

1. Track: “Gravy Waltz”
   Album: Hillbilly Jazz
   Label: Flying Fish
   Year: 1974

Hillbilly Jazz was Clements’ first solo album, although he already had over 20 years of experience in recording studios when he made it. He had a long and fruitful relationship with the Flying Fish label, which sought out uncategorizable artists, often with one foot in the jazz world. This was Clements’ ideal opportunity to introduce the world to his freewheeling bluegrass/jazz improv style.

The album includes several tunes that Clements co-wrote with guitarist David Bromberg and mandolinist Michael Medford, both of whom appear as session musicians. “Gravy Waltz” was written in 1962 by Steve Allen (later best known as a comedian at the piano) and Ray Brown; it became a minor jazz standard, with recordings by Oscar Peterson, Quincy Jones, and others. In Clements’ version, the fiddle starts off improvising counterpoint against Bromberg’s melody line on guitar. When Clements takes the melody at 1:28, he wanders way off the path and back like a true jazzman.

 

2. Track: “Hillbilly Jazz”
   Album: Hillbilly Jazz Rides Again
   Label: Flying Fish
   Year: 1986

“You can’t play swing on the fiddle” is the first line in the chorus of Clements’ song “Hillbilly Jazz,” which he sings and plays to open the album Hillbilly Jazz Rides Again. Unlike the first album, the instrumentation is jazzier than bluegrass. Steve Davidowski’s saxophone and Bob Hoban’s piano contribute greatly to the jazz sound. 

His fiddle solo starting at 1:50 is a good example of his improvisatory style – not quite either of the genres he’s borrowing from but made with big helpings of both.

 

3. Track: “Alabamy Bound”
   Album: Together at Last
   Label: Flying Fish
   Year: 1987

The melodic nature and raw energy of Clements’ playing often brings to mind the sound of jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli (I wrote about Grappelli in Copper Issue 89), so it’s fascinating to hear the two fiddle masters playing together on this duet album.

Experiencing them side by side is a good reminder of the suave, sliding quality of Grappelli’s style, compared to Clements’ grittier, wilder approach. Grappelli opens “Alabamy Bound”; Clements’ first solo is at 1:40. The two guitarists, in order of appearance, are Martin Taylor and Davis Causey.

 

4. Track: “Fiddlin’ Will”
   Album: Grass Routes
   Label: Rounder Records
   Year: 1991

 As the title implies, Grass Routes is more strictly a bluegrass album than many of Clements’ solo endeavors. There’s standard bluegrass instrumentation, including a banjo (J.D. Crowe), mandolin (Jesse McReynolds) and another fiddle (Buddy Spicher). It seems like Clements made this record to prove that he could do something besides his signature hillbilly jazz, and to remind listeners that he came up with the great Bill Monroe.

Jesse McReynolds and his brother Jim (who sings lead here) wrote “Fiddlin’ Will.” Clements demonstrates just how well-behaved he can be, sticking with bluegrass tropes, beautifully executed without even a whiff of jazz.

 

5. Track: “Once in a While”
   Album: Once in a While
   Label: Flying Fish
   Year: 1992

Even with his distinctive sound, Clements was thought of by many as primarily a bluegrass and country musician (he gets a significant mention in the Ken Burns PBS series on country music). But his claim to the jazz world was well-founded. Once in a While finds Clements jamming with three musicians boasting bona-fides in the realm of jazz. Guitarist John Abercrombie was known especially for his work in free jazz; bassist Dave Holland played a lot with Miles Davis, including on the classic album Bitches’ Brew; drummer Jimmy Cobb also recorded several albums with Davis, such as Kind of Blue.

But bluegrass is in his blood, and there’s no erasing it. On Clements’ version of the song “Once in a While,” there are occasional hints, like his use of sliding double stops, that let the hillbilly roots shine through the musical language of jazz. 

 

6. Track: “If That’s Love”
   Album: Back Porch Swing
   Label: Chrome Records
   Year: 1998

The cover of this LP proclaims “Vassar Clements and his Little Big Band.” So, Clements is going back to his earliest days, when he first learned the fiddle by mimicking melodies from big band shows on the radio. There’s a wide range of repertoire here: early New Orleans jazz by Jelly Roll Morton, a standard by Johnny Mercer, and originals by Clements and friends.

But it’s not all big band fare. “If That’s Love” is a funky, bluesy tune by Fred Bogert, a multi-instrumentalist who produced this album and sings the lead on this track. Clements’ improvisations are angular and wild, nicely paired with Paul Zonn on clarinet.

 

7. Track: “Mr. Bojangles”
   Album: Full Circle
   Label: OMS Records
   Year: 2001

The title Full Circle refers to Clements embracing his musical background in bluegrass, yet also looking ahead to the future of that genre. So, he teamed up with some top-notch younger musicians as well as some longtime companions to make the point. Among the old guard are dobro player Josh Graves and harmonica virtuoso Jimmy Fadden (of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), playing alongside young banjo superstar Béla Fleck.

Jeff Hanna (also of NGDB) sings Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles.” It starts simply enough, but when that fiddle comes in, the familiar song takes on a surreal quality.

 

8. Track: “Dirty Drawers”
   Album: Livin’ with the Blues
   Label: Acoustic Disc
   Year: 2004

Released less than a year before Clements died, Livin’ with the Blues is the fiddler’s most blues-focused album. Among those laying a solid blues foundation are some experts in that genre: bassist Ruth Davies and guitarist Bob Brozman. Special guest singers include Maria Muldaur, Marc Silber, and Elvin Bishop. 

Bishop sings on “Dirty Drawers,” his own composition. It’s a down-and-dirty arrangement, with an aching fiddle solo emerging from a thick instrumental web at 2:12.

 

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/David Gans.

James Lipton, the host of the TV series Inside the Actors Studio was one of the clients I had the longest, from the nineties up until his passing in 2020. Just like I save the magazines that contain my published articles, Jim saved his television appearances. He taped everything by recording on VCR, but when he wanted copies, it became a problem. The issue with copying tapes is that the video quality seriously deteriorates each time a copy is made.

I found a solution for James: the then-just-released GoVideo VCR, introduced around the mid-1990s. It was a double-slotted VCR tape deck that was great at duplicating VCR tapes. You could make copies of VHS tapes at high speed with no significant loss of quality. The GoVideo machine pretty much solved the problem.

Not long after its debut, issues arose. GoVideo was sued by the powers that be in Hollywood over copyright infringement issues. In other words, because of the GoVideo VCR’s ability to copy movies. GoVideo had their moment, but within a year of their initial release they shut down. But Jim had his and it was seriously employed.

A GoVideo dual-VCR deck.

 

Down the road, I installed one of the first TiVo DVRs at Jim’s, and while that offered standard (480i), resolution, it was higher video quality than VHS. This was around 1999.

Jim’s townhouse was on East 80th Street. He and his wife, Kedakai, lived on the second, third and fourth floors, with rental dental office occupying the street level. My service calls were for his video system, for installing equipment or for repairing or correcting problems, and I was his go-to guy for tech.

He often showed me his recent appearances on the various late-night shows like The Late Show with David Letterman. When flat screens became the rage, he wanted one. He asked me over to go shopping with him, so along with one of his production assistants, we took a cab to the Best Buy on 86th Street. Getting out of the taxi, we had to cross the street.

We were jaywalking across 86th and cars were zipping by. People were yelling out their car windows. “Hey Jim!” “Hey James!” he waved back; he loved it. Entering Best Buy, we bumped into two New York City cops who were just inside the door, escorting out a suspect. Seeing Jim, they turned from their suspect to him and said hello. The handcuffed arrestee was just standing there, looking annoyed. Jim then told the cops the story of when Dave Chappell called him from stage during a gig and incorporated the live call into his act. 10 minutes later the cops, thoroughly entertained and impressed, said goodbye to Jim, and escorted their prisoner out.

We took the escalator down to the television department and out of nowhere comes this loud voice: “Ken Sander is in the house; what the hell are you doing here?” It’s Paul Johnson, one of my former employees, a repair technician who now worked for Best Buy as a supervisor for their Geek Squad. Paul was helpful and walked Jim though his television choices. He wound up buying a 47-inch Samsung LCD. After the purchase Jim’s production assistant said to us, “damn, I’m with some famous people.” On the street, everyone knows James Lipton but here, Ken is the famous one. OK, an exaggeration of our realities, but it was flattering nonetheless.

 

James Lipton and Ken Sander. Courtesy of Ken Sander.

 

Whenever he had any tech issues, Jim would personally call me to come over. He didn’t want phone advice; he expected me to be there and solve the issue. It had to be the same day or the very next morning. This was understandable, because he was on the air weekly, and that required mucho prep and research. After all, he did insightful and detailed interviews. The fact that I was so responsive was a big part of our relationship, not to mention I was good at this stuff, back then anyway. He had thank you notes from the most famous movie and Broadway stars all over his townhouse.

One evening I was leaving Jim’s townhouse and my cell rang, and I hesitated to look at it and got caught between the inner door and the outer door. I was locked in, stuck. I called Jim and it went straight to voice mail. I tried calling a few more times and now I imagined that I might have to spend the night there. 

Finally, seeing no other options, I called 911. About 10 minutes later I saw a patrol car slowly pulling over. The cop got out, checked the address and saw me, but he was hesitant to come over. I put both of my palms on the window pane so he could see I was not a threat. Still, he was looking at me suspiciously. He slowly came over and asked, “what’s going on?” I told him I was locked in. He gave me a “yeah, right!” look, but since he was outside, I asked him to ring the townhouse’s doorbell. Kedakai answered, and he identified himself as the police and asked her to come down.

Within a minute Kedakai came down the stairs. She was shocked and surprised to see me locked in the vestibule and she assured the police officer that she knew me. When I explained to them to how I got locked in, she nodded in understanding, but was upset for me and immediately apologetic. The next time I came for a service call they gave me a bottle of wine.

One night I was making a call to sports broadcaster Greg Gumbel’s apartment on 57^th Street, and when I was walking back to my car I had to walk east across fifth Avenue. I was on the east side of Fifth just south of 57th and on the other side of the street was Donald Trump and his then-wife Marla Maples. My goodness, she was beautiful. It was close to 10:00 p.m. and the sidewalk was empty. They were deep in conversation and I could feel some tension. Another time, around 9:00 at night, I was alone on the northern meridian of Park Avenue and 70^th Street waiting for the light to change. This is a residential area (if you can use that term in the city). I heard sirens and saw a caravan of police and security. The flashing police lights were heading up the slight incline on Park Avenue towards me, with maybe five police cars in the front and back of the caravan. In the middle of the police cars were a couple of unmarked security vehicles, all surrounding a limousine.

They got to 70^th Street and turned westward toward Madison Avenue. As the limo slowed to turn I looked into the passenger section. It was no more than 15 or 20 feet away from me and the interior light was on, and inside the limo was none other than Pope John Paul II. He was looking out the window and saw me and waved to me. Then I remembered hearing that the Pope was in town. 

One day I got a call from a trusted client. He wanted me to do an installation up in Harlem – a nightclub, and they wanted all their televisions connected or daisy chained so they could show the same video content on all screens simultaneously. I was a little concerned. It is safe to say it was out of my normal territory. Not a fancy address; it was on 127th Street, just west of Park Avenue. 

It was a warm summer night, and I parked my car on 127^th. Lots of folks were out. It seemed like the whole neighborhood was outside standing around and chitchatting. All the houses were turn-of-the-century brownstone buildings with stoops. This part of Harlem was not a fancy area, no high-rise buildings. Carrying my canvas Klein tool bag that showed that I was working, I climbed the up the stoop of an unimpressive brownstone building and rang the bell. It was little unusual, because it was the only bell rather than the usual group of ringers in an apartment building. I got rung in and still saw nothing special, just a hallway to an apartment door.

As I approached the apartment the door opened for me. Inside it was luxurious; the building was transformed. I entered a large ballroom with beautiful wood floors, and there was a stage on one side of the room. The high ceiling had beautiful fixtures with hanging lights. High-end wouldn’t begin to describe it.

Apparently, they had at least three of those brownstones joined together, with no walls separating the buildings. Unbelievable; from the street outside there was no clue that this place existed. All you saw was a row of these same unimpressive hundred-year-old brownstones.

I have lived in the city most of my life. During the time I worked as the Cable Doctor I was out doing these house calls on weekday nights. These were quiet nights; school nights, and most working people were home. Consequently, you saw and noticed things. I considered myself to be in the loop, but these nighttime calls made for a different perspective. I didn’t feel like it was a dangerous experience, but I witnessed some quick and subtle happenings, up close and personal.

 

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/David Shankbone.

Beyond cool: a circa 1940s or 1950s EMI Dicta recording – yes, recording – system that used 12-inch floppy magnetic discs. They worked like magnetic tape does, except in disc form. Spotted by Ken Kessler at the 2005 Tonbridge AudioJumble.

 

Also from the 2005 AudioJumble, an RCA Model LMI32230 tuner from the 1950s, with a matching amplifier, model number unknown. Stunning! Courtesy of Ken Kessler.

 

Here's one more from AudioJumble 2005: a Masco ME-18 vintage PA amplifier, year unknown. It turns out these are highly desirable as blues harp (harmonica) and guitar amps. It looks fantastic with its gold tube cage on. Courtesy of Ken Kessler.

  

I love you for sentimental reasons: the Kimberly guitar on the left was my first electric guitar, which my father bought for me in 1968. He was convinced it would ruin my life. You be the judge! From the 1969 Lafayette catalog, courtesy of reader John Goodman.

 

Let your music take off with this Emerson Model 747 portable radio. If someone gave this to me as a gift, I'd be thrilled! Emerson ad, circa 1953. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Joe Haupt.

The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM), located in Phoenix, Arizona, possesses 14,000 instruments and other artifacts that are housed in a state-of-the-art 200,000 square foot structure containing 350 exhibits. It is the foremost musical instrument museum in the world. I have been a docent at the museum for the last seven years and in previous Copper articles (Issue 169 and Issue 186) I discussed some of my favorite exhibits in the museum’s “geo” galleries, which cover over 200 countries across five geographic regions. My focus for this article is on the museum’s Artist Gallery, which contains noteworthy musical instruments and artifacts associated with some of the world’s leading musicians. There are approximately 40 exhibits in this gallery, which encompass regions around the globe and a significant number of music genres.

I’m going to talk about the exhibits for the following artists:

• Andy Summers/the Police: rock
• King Sunny Adé: juju
• Ravi Shankar: Hindustani
• Kronos Quartet: classical/eclectic
• Glen Campbell: country/pop
• Celia Cruz: salsa

Andy Summers/The Police: Rock

The Police were a predominantly British group formed in London in 1977. The best-known member is Sting (nee Gordon Sumner), their lead vocalist, bassist, and writer of most of their songs. Andy Summers, the Police’s lead guitarist, replaced original guitarist Henry Padovani shortly after the group was formed. Drummer Stewart Copeland was the only non-Brit in the band. While they have gotten together on occasion since then, the band broke up at the peak of their popularity in 1984 and Sting has gone on to have an outstanding solo career. The Police won five Grammy awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. It was Summers and his people who worked closely with MIM personnel to bring this exhibit into the museum. The guitar he played during the Police’s 2007 reunion tour is prominently displayed.

 

Outlandos d'Amour, the debut album by the Police.

  

Early on, the three members of the Police dyed their hair blond to portray a punk band in a commercial, and maintained that persona going forward. In doing so, they initially became known as a “punk band,” but their music is really a fusion of many influences. Sting had previously performed with jazz combos, Summers had a background in R&B, and Copeland had been with progressive rock band Curved Air. There is also a distinct reggae influence in some of the Police’s music. So “rock” is probably the best umbrella term for their sound.

The Police have produced many songs that have become household names to fans of that era. The first was “Roxanne,” which failed to become a hit when first released in 1978 (some believe it was because it described prostitution, and it didn’t chart until it was re-released in 1979). However, “Roxanne” was their ticket to a major recording contract with A&M Records. Other iconic Police songs include “Message in a Bottle,” “Walking on the Moon,” “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” “Everything She Does is Magic,” and “Every Breath You Take.”

Sting has had a formidable music career since going solo. Summers has continued to record music and tour. He has also written music for several films, is an accomplished photographer, and is presently involved in a Police tribute band. Copeland has had an amazing post-Police career. In addition to performing and recording, he has written orchestral and operatic compositions and music for smartphones and video games.

Sometime after the Police dissolved, I was sitting at a hotel bar during a business trip and the bar had a DJ playing music. I was blown away by a song that I heard. I approached the DJ and asked him what that was. It was “Sister Moon” by Sting. I was familiar with the music of the Police at that time but had no knowledge of their personnel, and Sting has subsequently become a favorite of mine. I recently put together a male vocalists playlist and, of course, Sting is included. Ironically, “Sister Moon” did not make it onto the playlist. My two selections were “Fields of Gold” and “Fragile.” Sting is one of the great ones!

 

King Sunny Adé: Juju

Chief Sunday Adeniyi Adageye, known professionally as King Sunny Adé, was born into the royal family of the Yoruba people, one of the largest ethnic groups in Nigeria. The appellation “King” is derived from his being viewed as the “king of Nigerian juju music.”

Juju music arose early in the 20th century. The first recordings were made in the 1920s. It is a fusion of traditional Yoruba music and Western influences introduced into the region by Europeans. The name is derived from a Yoruba word meaning “throwing,” and not from a form of magic common in West Africa and parts of the Caribbean. Until the 1960s, juju was mostly confined to the Yoruba populace but subsequently became the dominant popular music genre in Nigeria.

 

King Sunny Adé. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/master_xpo.

 

In the late 1960s, a standard juju ensemble format emerged. This consisted of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and various percussion instruments usually consisting of conga, gangan (talking drum), clave (hardwood sticks), sekere (gourd/bead combo), and agogo (bells). Later on, synthesizers, vibraphones, steel guitars, and other percussion instruments were added.

It is noteworthy that brass and woodwind instruments have never seriously found their way into juju music. The predecessor to juju in Nigeria was a form called “highlife,” which is a fusion of African and Western jazz elements that originated in Ghana. Brass and woodwind instruments are fundamental to highlife music. It is thought that early juju artists intentionally avoided brass and woodwinds to better distinguish their music from the highlife music to which people were accustomed. Also, juju evolved in a somewhat ad hoc manner with street musicians playing an important role. Brass and woodwinds are louder than most other instruments and it is theorized that those street musicians did not want to be overly intrusive to their neighbors.

My introduction to juju music was via another widely acclaimed performer named Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey (whose actual name is Ebenezer Remilekun Aremu Olasupo Fabiyi). I had assumed that similar to King Sunny Adé, Obey was born into Nigerian royalty, hence the title “Chief Commander.” Not so. He came from relatively humble beginnings and acquired that title due to the intensity with which he managed his early ensembles. I have always had a slight preference for Obey’s music vs Adé’s and view his album, Juju Jubilee, to be the definitive modern juju music.

 

Ravi Shankar: Hindustani

Ravi Shankar was born into an elite Brahmin family and spent his teen years touring with a dance troupe prior to pursuing the sitar. He became a sitar virtuoso, composer, and the world’s best-known performer of Hindustani (North Indian) classical music. After a six-year stint studying sitar, Shankar dedicated himself to writing music for ballets and then became music director for a New Delhi radio station where he composed orchestral music consisting of Indian and classical Western instruments. This led to a collaboration with legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin with whom he would later record three albums. In the mid-1950s he began collaborating with Indian film director Satyajit Ray, and wrote the score for Ray’s acclaimed trio of movies, The Apu Trilogy. He later began performing in the United States and Western Europe and became widely recognized as the de facto ambassador of Indian music to the West.

Western interest in the sitar and Hindustani music got a major boost when the Beatles went to India to study with Shankar. Fellow musician David Crosby introduced Beatle George Harrison to Shankar’s music, which led to the Beatles’ trip to India in 1968. Harrison applied the education he got from Shankar by playing the sitar on classic Beatles songs like “Norwegian Wood” and “Within You Without You.” Subsequently, other rock groups began using the sitar. The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones played the sitar on “Paint It Black.” Traffic’s Dave Mason played it on “Paper Sun.” The sitar can also be heard extensively on Donovan’s album Sunshine Superman. Shankar became an active participant in the Western popular music scene and performed at the Monterey Pop Festival as well as Woodstock.

 

Ravi Shankar. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Markgoff2972.

 

Shankar’s relationship with George Harrison reached a crescendo in 1971 with The Concert for Bangladesh. Due to armed conflict between Indian and Pakistani elements, compounded by torrential flooding, the people of Bangladesh were in dire need of assistance. Shankar and Harrison organized a pair of benefit concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden on August 1, 1971, with all proceeds going to UNICEF to aid Bangladeshi refugees. Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, and others performed at the event. The resulting record album won the Grammy Album of the Year award. There had never before been a benefit of the magnitude of The Concert for Bangladesh.

Prior to the Beatles going to India, Shankar had established other important collaborations. He engaged in sessions with the great saxophonist, John Coltrane, whose 1964 masterpiece, A Love Supreme, clearly reflects Shankar’s influence. They kept in close contact until Coltrane’s untimely death in 1967. In 1970, Shankar wrote the Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra that he performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, with Andre Previn conducting. He was also not afraid to take on criticism from purists who scorned his integration of electronic instruments into some of his music.

Via several wives and other relationships, Shankar fathered a son and two daughters, notably singer, songwriter, and pianist, Norah Jones. He died in 2012 at the age of 92.

 

Kronos Quartet: Classical/Eclectic

The Kronos Quartet was conceived by violinist David Harrington and is celebrating its 50th anniversary later this year. While consisting of the same instruments (two violins, viola, and cello) as a classical string quartet and while doing ongoing work in contemporary classical music, they also engage in a wide variety of other musical genres. They are viewed to be ambassadors of contemporary chamber music.

Over its lifetime, Kronos has commissioned more than 1,000 works and arrangements and worked with contemporary minimalist composers including Phillip Glass, John Adams, Arvo Pärt, and many others. Collaborators span the entire world; Finland, Latvia, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Egypt, and Argentina are some examples of the quartet’s international reach. In addition to classical music, Kronos has performed rock, pop, world music, jazz, folk, and pre-classical early music. The quartet has done several movie soundtracks and performed with poet Allen Ginsburg, tango composer and musician Astor Piazzolla, rock band the National, the Modern Jazz Quartet, the Dave Matthews Band, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, and Tom Waits, to name a few. Frank Zappa has written for Kronos.

 

Kronos Quartet performs at the MIM in 2020. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Musical Instrument Museum.

 

In 2019, NASA initiated a project that had Kronos working with composer Terry Riley. This resulted in an album called Sun Rings which features sounds and images recorded by NASA in outer space.

In November, there will be a 50th anniversary celebration of the Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall. As of now, featured guest artists include Laurie Anderson (eclectic), Jake Blount (folk/roots), Brian Carpenter (singer/songwriter), Tanya Tagaq (Canadian First Nations music), Wu Man (Chinese music), Aizuri Quartet (string quartet), Attacca Quartet (string quartet), Bang On A Can All Stars (classical music organization), and Sō Percussion (percussion quartet). That is surely an appropriately representative cast to sum up the incredible 50 years of the Kronos Quartet.

 

Glen Campbell: Country/Pop

Born into an Arkansas sharecropper family in 1936, Glen Campbell developed into one of the greatest stars in country music, and crossed over into pop. He never learned to read music or had any formal music training but was acclaimed for his guitar playing capabilities. He also played banjo, mandolin, bass, and bagpipes. Campbell won six Grammys plus the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005. He hosted a TV variety show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, from 1969 to 1972 and appeared on a myriad of other TV shows. He also acted in 11 movies, most notably True Grit with John Wayne.

In 1960, Campbell moved to Los Angeles and became a session musician. Shortly thereafter, he became the lead guitarist for the Champs, who had had a number one hit with “Tequila” a couple of years earlier. He then signed with Capitol Records and worked mostly as a session guitarist and vocalist for several years. He performed with Merle Haggard, Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, the Mamas & the Papas, Ricky Nelson, and many others. He also had a brief stint touring with the Beach Boys as Brian Wilson’s replacement.

 

Glen Campbell. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Capitol Records/public domain. 

 

The 1960s and 1970s were the golden years for Glen Campbell’s career. His breakthrough song as a soloist was “Gentle On My Mind” in 1967. This was followed by “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” “Southern Nights,” and his signature song, “Rhinestone Cowboy.” A key to his acclaim was his ability to cross over to popular music with 30 top 20 country hits and 19 top 40 pop hits.

After CBS canceled his TV show in 1972, Campbell remained a fixture on network TV. In addition to hosting several TV specials, he was a guest on a number of network variety and talk shows. These included The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Donny & Marie, The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour, The Merv Griffin Show, and many others.

I conducted a MIM tour a number of years ago for Red Steagall, “The Official Cowboy Poet of Texas,” and some of his people. Red does a three-day cowboy festival in Fort Worth, TX every year. I took them into MIM’s Artist Gallery and, naturally, we visited all the country music exhibits. When we stopped at the Glen Campbell exhibit, Red’s voice broke up a bit and I thought I saw a tear in his eye as he said, “Glen Campbell was a very close friend of mine.” After a seven-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease, Glen Campbell passed away in 2017.

 

Celia Cruz: Salsa

Celia Cruz, the “Queen of Salsa,” was born in Havana, Cuba in 1925. After finishing high school and while furthering her education to become a literature teacher, she won a talent contest and decided to pursue a singing career instead. Her breakthrough came in 1950 when she became the lead vocalist for the popular orchestra La Sonora Matancera. She was the first black lead singer of that very popular ensemble. Cruz continued in that role for 15 years and mastered many Afro-Cuban music styles. The group recorded numerous singles that were later compiled into full-length albums. Cruz sang regularly with the ensemble on radio and television, toured extensively, and appeared with it in five films. She was also a frequent headliner at Havana’s historic Tropicana nightclub.

An aftermath to the Cuban revolution was the nationalization of the music industry and the disappearance of most of Havana’s nightlife. As a result, Cruz and most of the members of La Sonora Matancera left Cuba for Mexico and then the United States. Cruz became a U.S. citizen in 1961 and an enraged Fidel Castro barred her from ever returning to Cuba. She married Pedro Knight, one of the band’s trumpet players, who became her manager when she left the band to pursue a solo career. Cruz was relatively unknown in the U.S. outside of the Cuban exile community until she began collaborating with Puerto Rican drummer Tito Puente and his band, with whom she produced five record albums.

In the early 1970s, salsa had become very popular and Cruz adapted smoothly to that phenomenon. Her record label was acquired by Fania Records, renowned for their salsa artists. She often appeared with the Fania All-Stars, a salsa supergroup that included well-known artists such as Johnny Pacheco, Ray Barretto, Willie Colon, and Mongo Santamaria. Cruz found herself at the heart of New York City’s vibrant salsa scene. Her trademark became her flamboyant attire featuring sequined dresses, extravagant wigs, and extreme high-heeled shoes. She also was acclaimed for her extraordinary manner of audience engagement.

 

Celia Cruz, Canta, album cover.

 

Celia Cruz produced 37 studio albums as well as numerous live albums and collaborations. She has received Grammy and Latin Grammy awards including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Cruz appeared in several movies and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music bears her name. Next year, the U.S. Mint will be producing a quarter with Cruz’s likeness on it.

I have attended many concerts over the years but only a handful are vividly etched into my memory. Howlin’ Wolf crawling on his knees through the audience and howling into the microphone; a solo performance by Neil Young playing guitar, piano, and organ; Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys all wearing dark blue, three-piece pinstripe suits and big white Stetsons; a very old Champion Jack Dupree staggering off the piano stool after one of his last performances – and Celia Cruz strutting across the stage in her sequined dress and high-heeled shoes!

 

It should be noted that the Musical Instrument Museum does not arbitrarily exhibit an artist – it must have the cooperation of the artist or whoever owns her/his rights. Other musicians featured in the Artist Gallery include Johnny Cash, Tito Puente, Pablo Casals, Buddy Rich, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and so many more. Choosing which artists to feature in this article took quite a bit of thought and much consideration was given to the variety of geographic areas and genres they represent.

 

Header image: the MIM's Elvis Presley exhibition, courtesy of the Musical Instrument Museum.

Five years ago, singer/songwriter Juliana Hatfield embarked on a project that she had thought would be a one-off. She did a tribute record, covering the music of Olivia Newton-John. After years of participating in bands like Blake Babies and Some Girls, and collaborating with members of Nada Surf, the Lemonheads, and Paul Westerberg, she has shaped a sound that is both cosmic and cool. That sound infused the music of Olivia Newton-John in ways that even caught Newton-John’s attention. It was a critical success, and prompted Hatfield to tackle her next act, the British trio the Police. While she initially had intended for the third record in this series to feature American rock band R.E.M., she instead decided to put her attention on Jeff Lynne and the music of Electric Light Orchestra.

The result is Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, perhaps her best covers project yet. Slated for full release on November 17, with a couple of tracks now on streaming services, the record is not a “greatest hits” package. Instead, it contains carefully curated songs that span the band’s entire discography. Sure, there are songs from the 1970s like “Telephone Line” and “Don’t Bring Me Down.” But there are also songs like “Ordinary Dream” from 2001’s Zoom that will surprise and delight even die-hard fans.

 

Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, album cover.

 

As on previous albums, Hatfield is again joined by Ed Valauskas on bass and Chris Anzalone on drums. But Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, unlike the first two was almost entirely made on GarageBand in her bedroom. There is certainly no shortage of covers records out there. But few take such a thoughtfully fresh approach to their subjects and almost none bring forward arrangements that are as clever, and in many ways, daring.

Copper caught up with Hatfield to talk about the process of making these records and how it inspires her own music. She is about to announce a series of fall dates where this music and more will come to life as only Juliana Hatfield could possibly make happen. Along the way we learned of how deep her regard is for the people she covers, and how precious she considers their material to be when it is on loan, in her hands.

 

Ray Chelstowski: When you first decided to do a “covers” record, did you know then that it would become a series?

Juliana Hatfield: No. I can’t plan that far ahead. I’m always focused on the thing at hand. It was all about Olivia Newton-John, and that was all I was thinking about. It became such a gratifying experience for me that I decided to keep doing it. Now I want to keep going.

RC: I read that you first thought about doing a Phil Collins’ record, not Olivia Newton-John. Is that one still kicking about? Also, you had said that an R.E.M, covers record would follow the Police, but in the end decided upon ELO. Is R.E.M. still possible?

JH: I think I’ve moved on from the Phil Collins idea but I’m definitely still contemplating R.E.M. That is one that I do want to tackle. But it was too big of a project when I was thinking about it the last time, mostly because there is a lot of material that I don’t know. I stopped listening to their music at a certain point, for no reason other than my brain got too full of other things. That can happen when a band is around for a long time. You can sometimes drift away. Reckoning and Murmur were major events in my life so it’s really the early stuff that hit me the hardest. Of course, there’s a lot of great stuff that followed those records and I want to make song choices that are part of the entire oeuvre. Then I had an idea that I could do an R.E.M. volume 1 and then do a volume 2.

RC: You have followed the covers records up with studio albums. Do these covers projects impact your own writing?

JH: It does, but unfortunately not in the sense that any of the music style of the band I’m covering will rub off on my writing. I was hoping that doing covers would pull me out of my writing and singing habits. But those things seem to be in my DNA. I can’t get away from it. My style is built into me and when I try to get outside of it things sound awkward and forced. With the covers projects I am really trying to get at what makes these songs so magical.

 

Juliana Hatfield. Courtesy of David Doobinin.

 

RC: Do you make these records in a studio?

JH: For Olivia Newton-John and the Police, we did the record in the studio. The pandemic was something that forced me to learn how to record directly into my laptop. So, with the help of my friend Jed Davis, who is like my remote 24-hour tech support, I learned how to work GarageBand. I’m using like one percent of its capabilities but I was able to do most of my album Blood on it. Then I got more comfortable with it and that was a huge accomplishment for me. With this ELO record I did everything at home in my bedroom. There were days where Ed, Chris and I would meet at a rehearsal space to work on arrangements. Chris recorded drums there and Ed recorded bass at his home studio and they worked off basic tracks I had made at home. They’d then send their tracks to me and I finished everything at home. Then when it was all done Pat DiCenso mixed everything at his place.

RC: You include songs here that many fans may not be aware of. Do you enter the project knowing which songs will be on the final cut?

JH: I never know everything at the beginning. Even if I think I know what I want to do, things change during the recording process. You can’t really control these things that closely. There were songs that I knew I wanted to do like “Don’t Bring Me Down,” and “Telephone Line.” But “Sweet Is The Night” (the album opener) is maybe my favorite. I just love that song so much. With ELO there wasn’t as much material that I wasn’t familiar with compared to R.E.M. But I discovered later albums like Zoom through the process of making this record. I really wanted to have familiarity with all of the material, not just the songs from the 1970s. I wanted to respect Jeff Lynne enough to listen to all of his material.

 

RC: Have you ever run these projects by the people you are covering?

JH: I don’t know any of these people that I’ve covered personally. But Olivia Newton-John was very gracious when the album came out. She talked about it on her website and mentioned it on Twitter which was really cool. My record company was actually in touch with her people before the release because we wanted to mention her cancer charity, because we agreed to donate one dollar to it from each [record] sale. So she was able to help us promote it.

RC: Nicole Anguish has done the cover illustration for all three of these records, and she’s created a real signature look to the series.

JH: She’s done all three album covers as well as gig posters for me. After she did the first two album covers it just made sense to ask her to do this one as well. She’s really good at finding that one thing that helps it make sense. In this case she knew that the sunglasses were a great connection and putting a profile of me in their lenses just seemed brilliant; obvious, but brilliant.

RC: Are you going to do any live dates in support of the record?

JH: I do. It’s coming together. We’re doing it in chunks. There are going to be some shows in October, then some shows in November; maybe some in December. We’re just finalizing them now and we hope to announce them shortly. Keep an eye on my website!

 

Header image courtesy of David Doobinin.

He's ready for travel through interstellar space. Taken in Trafalgar Square, London.

Actress Lana Turner was discovered while drinking a milkshake at Schwab’s pharmacy. Pam Anderson was at a football game when her picture suddenly flashed across the Jumbotron. Justin Bieber’s journey to fame began by uploading cover songs to YouTube. But perhaps no road to discovery is more circuitous than that of the Emerson brothers, two 1970’s teen musicians hailing from Fruitland, Washington, a small farming town better known for producing apples and wheat than pop stars.

Donnie and Joe Emerson’s musical journey is well-chronicled in the just released feature film Dreamin’ Wild, titled after the brothers’ 1979 album of the same name. The film is a true story starring Casey Affleck as adult brother Donnie, Zooey Deschanel as his wife Nancy, and Walton Goggins as adult brother Joe. Beau Bridges and Barbara Deering are cast as the boys’ father and mother, respectively.

 

Casey Affleck and Zooey Deschanel as Donnie and Nancy Emerson.

Dreamin’ Wild is a story about sacrifice, love, and a parent’s belief in the musical aspirations of their children, particularly younger son Donnie, a multi-talented instrumentalist and singer-songwriter. The boys’ father, Don Sr., was so committed to his sons’ musical pursuits that he mortgaged and subsequently lost roughly 1,500 acres of farmland to finance their dreams, including constructing a home recording studio where the Dreamin’ Wild LP was produced.

The Emerson’s farm-based studio had a control room, a then state-of-the-art TEAC eight-track recorder, a Moog synthesizer, and carpeted floor and walls for soundproofing. The family funded and pressed 2,000 vinyl copies of Dreamin’ Wild in 1979, but the album didn’t generate much traction, even among the locals. The album languished in obscurity until a known record collector and music blogger, Jack Fleischer, purchased the album for $5.00 in a Spokane antique shop in 2008.

Shortly thereafter the 30-year-old album started to blow up with music bloggers and in early-stage social media. When the buzz and album’s sound reached the ears of Matt Sullivan, co-owner of Seattle-based Light In The Attic Records (LITA), a reissuing label perhaps best known for rediscovering Sixto Rodriquez of Searching for Sugarman fame, he jumped all over the opportunity.

When Sullivan (portrayed in the film by Chris Messina) subsequently met with the Emersons he discovered they still had most of the original analog tape from their 1979 recording sessions. “They did a very good job of preserving what they had,” Sullivan shared with Copper. “The tapes were kept in a storage locker in a climate-controlled room. They definitely knew what they were doing, and they were very professional about taking care of things.”

LITA reissued Dreamin’ Wild in 2012, and the album’s cult-like buzz just kept growing. The online music pub Pitchfork rated the reissued LP an 8 out of 10, calling it “a godlike symphony to teenhood.” The New York Times then published a lengthy piece on the Emerson brothers’ improbable road to discovery, thereby reaching a far more mainstream audience. 

The songs on Dreamin’ Wild cover a range of musical genres from power pop to soul to funk. The album is a reflection of the era in which it was conceived, and it possesses a far more demo-like quality than the polished (sometimes overproduced) sound of today’s hits. Nonetheless, there’s purity to the brothers’ sound, and it’s easy to appreciate Donnie’s writing chops, even as a young teen. His talent is evident in the album’s song structure and development.

While we’re all familiar with the expression “don’t judge a book by its cover,” the Dreamin’ Wild LP shouldn’t be judged by its cover, either. The cover photo features the brothers in an Elvis Presley high-collar fashion look. As 17 (Donnie) and 19 (Joe) year-old teens, the brothers were hardly marketing savvy, though they certainly could have chosen a far less successful role model to emulate.

 

Dreamin' Wild, album cover. Courtesy of Light in the Attic Records.

 

The vocals on the Dreamin’ Wild LP are heavy with reverb, reminiscent of early 1960s British pop, while some tracks have a particularly strong bass mix. The opening track is “Good Time,” a quintessential power pop tune that should be cranked to the despair of one’s neighbor. Arguably, the two best songs on the LP are “Baby,” a sultry, soul-oriented track, and “Dream Full of Dreams,” a warm piano ballad that makes good use of the home studio Moog. “Baby” was also featured in the soundtrack to the film Celeste and Jesse Forever, while indie artist Ariel Pink covered the song on his LP Mature Themes. The closing track on the album is “My Heart,” a tune with strong roots in techno-pop.

 

Regarding Dreamin’ Wild the film, Copper attended a screening of the movie this past May at the Seattle International Film Festival. More recently, we caught up with the film’s writer, director and producer, Bill Pohlad, to chat about the movie and the music. Pohlad also directed the highly regarded biopic Love and Mercy about the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. His other film credits include executive producer or producer on Brokeback Mountain, A Prairie Home Companion, and 12 Years A Slave.

Stuart Marvin: Hi Bill, initially you were on the fence about directing Dreamin’ Wild. What was it about finally meeting Donnie and the Emerson family that changed your mind?

Bill Pohlad: Donnie picked us up at the Spokane airport and drove us to the Fruitland farm, which is a couple of hours away. I got to see the farm and the community. I got to know Donnie – as best one can in a few hours – and I was fascinated by his whole being. When we drove back to Spokane it was the middle of the night, and Donnie was talking about his life. He eventually broke down in tears, and I said to myself, ‘wow, there’s a lot going on here, a lot of emotion, and a lot of things below the surface.’ Eventually I met the parents, got to know brother Joe a little bit better, and I became captivated by them all.

SM: Did the Dreamin’ Wild LP appeal to your musical sensibilities?

BP: Absolutely. The first time I heard “Baby” it felt like the kind of song that you’ve known all your life. It had a dreamy, mystical quality to it. It really appealed to me. It’s definitely the kind of music that I’m generally attracted to.  

 

SM: Casey Affleck’s interpretation of Donnie seems pretty low key and introspective. Was that an accurate portrayal of Donnie’s persona?

BP: I wanted Casey for that very reason. He has the quality to make Donnie seem “otherworldly.” Sometimes Donnie’s off dreaming and seems disconnected from the world as it is right now, which I’m attracted to in a way. I really thought Casey had the ability to pull that off. He has some of those same qualities naturally, and that’s why I was drawn to him for the role. 

SM: Did you do anything to the Dreamin’ Wild LP’s sound to make it more suitable for the big screen?

BP: Donnie and his band re-recorded a lot of the songs we wanted to use, so it would be appropriate for the various settings we were putting him in, like a bar or different locations. Sometimes we’d use the original (album) track, and sometimes we’d use Noah and Jack’s version (Noah Jupe and Jack Dylan Grazer play younger Donnie and Joe, respectively), which has a sense of youth and immediacy to it, and a far less finished quality. You don’t want them rehearsing and sounding like they had a finished track.

 

Noah Jupe and Jack Dylan Grazer as the younger Donnie and Joe Emerson. Courtesy of River Road Entertainment.

 

SM: Tell me about the song “When A Dream Is Beautiful” that Donnie wrote for the film. What was the genesis of that, and did you think you needed something fresh and new to bring the story full cycle?

BP: You know, in normal Hollywood fashion you’d think these guys would go through their struggles, have a day of reckoning, and come out the other end as huge stars. That didn’t happen with Donnie and Joe. That’s not how the story plays out, and that’s why I liked it. You do want a strong movie ending, some resolution that helps the audience complete this journey with them. People would ask, where’s Donnie now? Well, he’s still making music, and I wanted some representation of that. So I talked to Donnie about that and we went back and forth. To be honest, the period of film production was not easy for him, as it wouldn’t be for anybody. The idea of having a movie made about one’s self is really daunting. You think [the idea] sounds great, but there’s a lot of emotional stuff going on with him and the family. I think Donnie was naturally afraid of what was happening. We didn’t talk a lot during production, but I always had in my mind that maybe he would write a song for the end of the movie. Once I heard it, I knew that was it.

SM: Thanks for your time, Bill, and best of luck with the film!

As Pohlad noted, it was very hard for Donnie Emerson to come to terms with the public’s sudden out-of-the-blue interest in the Dreamin’ Wild LP. It confused and conflicted him. The bizarre timeline was a little too hard for him to process.  Donnie’s musical repertoire had evolved considerably from his teen years, and he was now writing a broader range of material, covering country, smooth jazz, funk and soul.

And what about the possibility of the Emerson’s recovering any of the large financial investment they made so many years ago?  Well, the good news is the Emerson’s retained all of the music’s publishing rights. “It’s a great scenario,” said LITA’s Sullivan. “They’re (now) making money, and not getting a raw end of the deal, which is so common in the entertainment business.”

Sullivan then summed up LITA’s relationship with the family this way: “in our 22-year history, with over 250 releases, the Emerson’s are at the top of the list of wonderful people to work with, regardless of the album’s success or not. They’re just lovely people.”

Let’s hear it for the good guys.

 

The Dreamin’ Wild: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and the original Dreamin’ Wild’ LP (1979) are available on Light In The Attic Records. 

Dreamin’ Wild, the movie, is in theaters everywhere.

Header image: Casey Affleck as Donnie Emerson. Courtesy of River Road Entertainment.

 

Copper has an exchange program with FIDELITY magazine (and others), where we share articles, including this one, between publications.

Taylor Swift is one of those artists who truly needs no introduction. OK, briefly: she began writing songs at age 14 and really started to hit it big in 2008 with her then country-pop sound. Since then, she’s had some shifts in musical styles – and has sold more than 200 million records and won 12 Grammy awards. She’s one of those rare artists to make the move from pop star to cultural icon.

In 2023, Taylor Swift has taken the country by storm with the Eras Tour, the first tour Swift has undertaken since late 2018. Since then, Swift has released four albums: Lover (2019), Folklore (2020), Evermore (2020), and Midnights (2022) while also re-recording and releasing several “Taylor’s Version” remakes of her older works. (She doesn’t possess the rights to the masters of her first six studio albums, because of a dispute with her former record label. She’s been re-recording those albums.)

 

Taylor Swift’s the Eras Tour will end up being one of the biggest of all time; a tour that anyone who is reading this has no doubt heard about. The Eras Tour is so named because it’s a journey through all of Swift’s musical “eras.” Encompassing 131 shows from March 2023 through August 2024, there’s been no escaping how big this tour was – and how hard it was for many fans to get tickets. Ticketmaster controversies aside, Taylor Swift has owned summer 2023.

 

Taylor Swift at Empower Field at Mile High. All images courtesy of TAS Rights Management.

 

She made a stop in Denver on July 15 and 16, and the week of the shows you could feel the excitement growing among everyone from city officials to local media to Denver fans who were lucky enough to get a ticket. Every local news channel had several stories revolving around the Eras Tour, covering its size and scope, noting how much revenue Denver was going to see from the two nights, and asking which era fans were from and noting how to dress for that era. I had never seen anything like it before.

I was extremely fortunate to make it to one of two sold out nights at Empower Field at Mile High, which was a feat no artist had ever done on a single tour. As the date approached my excitement grew and grew.

The morning of July 15 was not unlike most, starting with a coffee and breakfast, but it quickly turned into a bit of a whirlwind. My fiancé and I got dressed for our “Era,” which for me was just a breezy linen shirt and a tiny snake pin to represent the Redemption album, but my fiancé went all out for the show with a curated outfit from one of Taylor Swift’s red-carpet appearances. And so began our journey to the show.

 

With doors to the concert opening at 4:30 p.m. we thought we would outsmart the traffic and go a brewery across from the stadium at 1:00 p.m. to kill some time. Little did we know that thousands of people would have the same idea. Traffic was already flooding the streets, and as we approached the stadium, you could see the swarms of fans filling the nearby restaurants, bars, and lining up at the various merch stands outside of the stadium. Raices Brewing Company had special Swift cocktails and was playing Taylor Swift music, and the Swifties were in force, making and trading friendship bracelets and dancing to the music. We even met a mother and daughter who had driven from Cheyenne, Montana without tickets to the sold-out concert, in hopes that they would be able to score tickets at the last minute. Again, nothing that I have ever seen before.

After a couple of hours soaking in the lovely community who are the Swifties, we made our way to the stadium.

As we waited in line to get inside the stadium, we met more people from outside of Colorado who were unable to get tickets to a tour stop closer to their home. People from St. Louis, Kansas City, Minnesota, and Canada, as well as every corner of Colorado and even overseas, and those were just the few people near me in line or near my seat. Not only were people traveling from everywhere for the show, but almost everyone had elaborate outfits. In a sea of color and sequins and even some ball gowns, I definitely felt a little underdressed. I saw multigenerational groups all in their favorite era colors, and husbands and fathers wearing funny shirts to show support for their spouse or daughter. I saw little children with their grandparents in matching outfits. I would not have believed it without seeing it for myself, and the outfits should have tipped me off to what was going to unfold once Taylor Swift hit the stage.

 

At 7:50 p.m. a two-minute countdown appeared on the screens and the crowd absolutely erupted – and that was probably the tamest the crowd would be from that point forward. As Taylor appeared on stage, behind dancers who were wearing large, flowing fan-like extensions, the already-excited crowd hit the stratosphere. Thankfully I went prepared with my trusty concert ear plugs, but even with those I could still feel the force of the crowd. It was surreal. And with that Taylor’s on-stage marathon began.

 

 

With 10 studio albums over 17 years (sometimes it’s hard to believe she’s been around that long) to pull from, there was no shortage of musical variety on the set list. All of which made sense as Taylor explained the concept of the Eras Tour, and how she wanted to let the fans enjoy not only the songs from the four albums released since her last tour, but also celebrate the Taylor’s Version re-releases. Each album (Era) had its portion of the show, and each Era had elaborate set changes, visuals, and outfit changes, complete with instruments that matched the themes of the Eras, and even microphones to match.

No detail was overlooked. The 10 set changes also meant 10 outfit changes, and the most impressive part of all that was how quickly Taylor theatrically left the stage and then theatrically returned to the stage. Even the most elaborate outfit changes had a kind of sleight-of-hand that had the audience watching a well-choreographed routine by her dancers as Taylor emerged on the other side of the stage, or featured visuals like a fish swimming up the stage after Taylor dove in from one end. Some of my favorite sets included an open-faced cabin that Taylor and her team of dancers would go up and down from; or portions of the stage rising with Taylor and her band as the music and visuals transitioned from one Era to the next.

My favorite set piece was a beautiful-sounding piano decorated in moss to fit the aesthetic of the Evermore portion of the setlist, where Taylor, in a gorgeous yellow floral dress, played stripped-down piano versions of “Champagne Problems,” “Marjorie,” and “Tolerate It” in front of a set that resembled an enchanted forest. The costume designer for the show deserves tremendous credit, as each outfit change was more beautiful than the last and also helped drive the excitement of each portion of the show.

Each set of songs had its own vibe and feelings to it, making the show feel like 10 concerts carefully and thoughtfully woven into one. Some of the Eras had me feeling like I did when I first heard the albums. Although I never considered myself a “Swiftie,” Taylor and her music played a major role in music and pop culture as a whole over the last 17 years, so I knew way more songs than I thought I would. Singing along to songs you enjoyed back in 2006, 2008, 2010 and until now, it makes you appreciate how talented Taylor is. How much she loves what she does was also very much apparent. At one moment, with 73,000 fans singing in unison with Taylor, you could see her emotion and the appreciation she had, almost coming to tears. I could hardly believe what I was seeing as I looked around the stadium at the sea of people all there for one person. But Taylor took it all in stride, keeping everyone entertained at every moment.

 

 

As the night went on, I found myself in complete awe as Taylor Swift just kept going and going. The quality of her performance never dipped; her voice was as amazing from the first song to the last. The choreography also had Taylor and the dancers running back and forth from what looked to be at least a 60-yard stage. I, on the other hand, struggled to stay standing the entire time, and looking around, I saw there were many other people in the same boat as I was but the electricity from the crowd and the spectacle on the stage kept everyone going.

As soon as I would take my seat another set change would happen or pyrotechnics would go off. There was never a dull moment, and I have to say there was definitely not a bad seat in the house. Taylor Swift’s team went into this tour prepared to make sure every fan in attendance would get an unforgettable experience. With some of the best-sounding audio at a concert that I have experienced, to massive 100-plus-foot screens at the front and sides of the stage, and color-changing LED wristbands for each fan in attendance, even the most skeptical would have had the time of their life.

Three hours and twenty minutes was the run time, with hardly a minute break in between sets and no intermissions, and I am sure Taylor logged miles running up and down the stage. To call this show impressive feels like an understatement. I have been to some exceptional concerts, but none have offered the attention to detail or the energy level and stamina that was showcased at Empower Field on July 15, 2023 – and I don’t think any other show will ever be able to top how powerful and commanding Taylor Swift was on that stage. I was skeptical of the hype going in, but I walked away understanding why this tour was the show of the year. It was a night I’ll never forget.

 

 

Taylor Swift Setlist, Empower Field at Mile High, July 15, 2023

Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince
Cruel Summer
The Man
You Need to Calm Down
Lover
The Archer
Fearless
You Belong With Me
Love Story
'tis the damn season
willow
marjorie
champagne problems
tolerate it
Ready for It?
Delicate
Don't Blame Me
Look What You Made Me Do
Enchanted
Long Live
Red
22
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
I Knew You Were Trouble
All Too Well
the 1
betty
the last great american dynasty
august
illicit affairs
my tears ricochet
cardigan
Style
Blank Space
Shake It Off
Wildest Dreams
Bad Blood
Starlight
Back to December
Lavender Haze
Anti‐Hero
Midnight Rain
Vigilante Sh*t
Bejeweled
Mastermind
Karma

 

Scottish-born bassist Mandy Clarke packs a serious punch. As a member of underground ska legends Bombskare, Clarke brings the heat via the classic sounds of a Fender bass, plugged into a scorching Orange amplifier. But that's not all. Clarke has also played with singer/songwriter/guitarist and fellow Scotland native KT Tunstall.

The duality between these two gigs is not lost on Clarke, but still, she capably straddles the line between Bombskare's ska-laden shade and Tunstall's roots/pop light. In both settings, although there are other outstanding players on stage alongside her, Clarke handily manages to stand out.

Putting genre and setting aside, the most significant hallmarks of Clarke's career has been her incendiary bass tone, her steadfast drive, and her year-over-year consistency. She's become not only one of the best bassists that Scotland has ever produced – a group that includes Alan Gorrie (Average White Band), Guy Berryman (Coldplay), Pete Agnew (Nazareth), Justin Currie (Del Amitri), Stuart Sutcliffe (the Beatles) and others – but is also one of the premier players on her instrument, period.

During a break from the action, Mandy Clarke spoke with Copper to talk about how she got started on bass, working with Bombskare and KT Tunstall, her gear choices, and more.

Andrew Daly: What first inspired you to pick up the bass?

Mandy Clarke: At first, like [for many] bass players, it was Flea (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers). I remember hearing the track "Around the World" and thinking, "I want to do that!" Then I started listening to Primus 20 years later, [and am] still absolutely blown away by Les Claypool.

AD: Considering that guitarists get all the attention, why did you choose bass over guitar?

MC: I actually started out on guitar and played for maybe five years before I got into bass. I've never really thought about why I swapped instruments until lately: a lot of the bands I listened to were all-male lineups, asides from the Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins, and Sonic Youth. They all had female bass players, so maybe it was a subconscious decision. I'm not really sure, but I'm glad I made the change.

 

AD: Describe your initial approach, how you got there, and how you've expanded.

MC: I was pretty young when I started playing in bands. I played my first gig at 12 with my older brother at our local pub. I'm sure it was illegal, but I'm from a small town, so I don't think anyone really cared. That's where it all started. At 17, I went to work in a shop and met (to this day) the most incredible guitarist, Bruce Wallace (how's that for a Scottish name!).

We formed a band. His songwriting is nuts, and there's not much root note stuff happening [playing mostly the root notes of the chords to the songs], so it really pushed me to become a better player. It was pretty challenging stuff! From there, I went to college, then uni, to study music, and I guess I've just not stopped playing. It still blows my mind that I get to do this for a living.

 

Mandy Clarke.

 

AD: How do you straddle the line between sounding timeless and classic, and exploring off-the-beaten-path sounds?

MC: I think you just need to play whatever suits the music. If the song requires minimal bass, then that's what will happen; if it needs more, then do more. 

AD: Tell me about how you ended up with Bombskare.

MC: Oh wow, OK, so Bombskare had been going for a loooong time before I joined. I think maybe they've been a band for 25-ish years. I was a massive fan of theirs. I remember being too shy to speak to them, which is obviously quite funny now; I got that gig because the drummer I was in a band with at the time used to dep bass for them.

So, then they needed bass and drums, so we both went to the gig. But a week before, I busted my hand pretty badly and only had the use of two fingers on my left hand, but I was determined to go ahead. Their bass player ended up with a back injury, so he depped his gigs out for a year or so, then decided to leave the band, so I've been with them ever since. I think it's been about eight years!

AD: Describe the importance of the bass within ska and punk music. Do you feel it plays a more significant role or even carries the song?

MC: I mean... I'm maybe biased, but I feel like bass and drums play a massive role. Our job is to hold it down; if the rhythm section is on form, then everyone is just going to have a better time, right?

AD: What's your secret to good punk/ska bass, and how does that change when playing with someone like KT Tunstall?

MC: I think, like above, just keep it steady, be super-confident with every part you're playing, and don't overplay. It's cool to have some wee moments, but overall, just lock in with the drummer, and you're sorted. 

AD: KT is a far cry from Bombskare. Does that music speak to you in the same way? Where do you feel more at home?

MC: Absolutely! I loved playing with KT; her songwriting is incredible, and I was so grateful to play bass for her. I never expected anything like that to happen, and quite honestly, I was bricking it! We had a lot of fun. The whole band and crew were the most fun, kind people ever. I feel at home in any band where we gel on and off stage. 

AD: How do you achieve your signature tone? Is there a tried-and-true method? Do you use effects?

MC: This is a funny question to me because I couldn't really explain to anyone what I do; I'll just muck around with the amp at soundcheck until I have a sound I like. I've had a lot of people come up to me after gigs and say my tone is amazing, and I'm like, "Is it? Niiice."

Obviously, if I'm playing with my own amp (an Orange AD200B plus an OBC410 cabinet with four 10-inch speakers), then it's always set the same. Those amps are so user-friendly, I love them, but often at festivals [and so on] it's a backline job, so you just need to faff till you're happy. I don't use a ton of effects; I use the Boss ODB3 [bass overdrive] pedal if I need a distorted sound. It's a classic.

 

Mandy Clarke. All images courtesy of Neil Jarvie/Orange Amps.

 

AD: What are your thoughts on the idea that bass tones should be pure, versus more distorted sounds, à la Geezer Butler?

MC: It really just depends on the music. I mean...if I were to blast a distortion pedal through a ska set, it would probably almost definitely sound quite silly, but like [Adam Devonshire of] Idles, if he didn't play with some overdrive, it just wouldn't sound the same. 

AD: What bass guitars do you use?

MC: I have a Fender Deluxe Series Precision Bass; it's my main bass. I also have a Schecter Stiletto bass which is now the backup bass. It's a lot lighter, so if I'm playing a long gig, I'll take that instead. It's pretty messed up looking, though, but it's so great to play. 

AD: Is there a type of instrument that suits you best, or one you dislike? Does the size and weight of the instrument come into play?

MC: I wouldn't say I'm a massive fan of short-scale basses. I think I'm so used to using my whole arm span (I'm 5'1") to play bass, [that] when it's shorter, it feels weird.

AD: If it matters at all, do you prefer vintage or new instruments?

MC: I'm not sure I really have a preference, although there's something really nice about vintage instruments. I don't have a vintage bass, though!

AD: What combination of amps are you using? I know you've been a longtime user of Orange.

MC: Yeah, I still use Orange. I have an endorsement with them; they're awesome! The tone from those amps is great; it's like vinyl. I have [an] Orange head and cab, and I also use a Hartke combo amp (my first amp!) that I've had for 20 years. It wouldn't pass a PAT [portable appliance testing] test.

Sometimes, I get electric shocks from the back of the amp where the plug has fallen out, so it doesn't leave the house. I should get that fixed... I mean, it still works great aside from that! I also use the Geddy Lee edition SansAmp [Model DI-2112 preamp]; it took a while to get used to leaving for a gig with a [unit] the size of a tuner, a total life changer for smaller gigs!  

AD: How important are tube amps to you as opposed to digital rigs?

MC: I do like a tube amp. I think the sound you get from them is soooo nice. I don't think I've ever really used a digital rig.

AD: Do you agree with the idea that bassists are forgotten? What about the idea that the bass is easy?

MC: Nah, we're not forgotten, and bass isn't easy. If the bass was removed from your favorite bands, you'd notice! It takes years of practice to become a great bass player. Years and years, [and] locking in with the tempo is a major part of it. It can be very easy to muck up an "easy" bass line if you haven't spent years training your internal metronome.  

AD: What sounds are you chasing, and how do you plan to catch them?

MC: If you mean, what music am I chasing, then I've started my own band. It's primarily riff-based and will feature a lot of songs in major keys, and [the band wearing] fun outfits. I've always played other people's music, so it's massively fun playing in a band where I've written the songs.

I have that keeping me busy, plus a lot of gigs over the summer with Altered Images, Glasvegas, Bombskare, Groove Culture, and then a big tour at the end of the year which at this point still feels too insane to say out loud. All these bands are completely different, so it's been really fun learning the material and playing a totally different style of bass for each gig.

A recent TV commercial plugging some insurance company’s homeowner's policies suggested that it’s really hard not to become your parents.

Lately, my music tastes sometimes reflect theirs, something I could never fathom growing up. Both passed away within the past five years, and I recently turned 65.

I grew up a rock and roll kid in the 1960s, listening to AM Top 40 on my transistor radio, with Beatlemania, the British Invasion, Motown and all the one-hit wonders of the decade forever recorded in my brain cells.

At 5 years old, I remember the family watching the teenage bedlam that ensued by the Beatles’ arriving in New York City in 1964. My dad called it a “communist plot,” as if it was some sort of invasion because we lived not far from the airport. I didn’t know what a Beatle or communist was, but thought that anything that generated such a reaction must be interesting. 

As a kid growing up, my parents only had a few records – soundtracks to the stage musical My Fair Lady and movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (featuring B.J. Thomas’s hit, “Raindrops Fall on My Head,”) and kids’ birthday records.

I later thought it was weird that they didn’t have any records that reflected the 1960s zeitgeist, because before I was born in 1958 my mom worked for a music publisher who provided the song that became Johnny Mathis’s first hit, before she married my dad in 1957, around the same time that he worked at a Columbia Records warehouse.

When I cleaned out their house, I found a few promo singles of Mathis’s hit “Wonderful, Wonderful,” and some Frank Sinatra EPs, which I treat now like family heirlooms. One of my earliest memories was singing along as a 5-year-old, while my mom gave me a bath, to Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” which was playing on the radio in the background.

 

Some keepers from my mom's collection.

 

As it turned out, my grandfather (on my mom’s side) collected the real treasures. But my grandmother once told me when I was in my twenties that he abused her mentally, and she eventually divorced him in the mid-1960s. That’s why I remember only once visiting his house.

My grandfather loved gadgets, such as cameras and early record players. And he collected Elvis Presley records, including the early 7-inch singles on Sun Records!

If anyone had deserved those records, it would have been me. I’m the record collector in the family. I even published a book about how vinyl has enjoyed the most improbable comeback of the 21st century, and started a B2B conference celebrating its global rebirth. [Larry’s being modest here. His book is Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21^st Century, and he’s the co-founder of industry trade organization Making Vinyl. – Ed.] 

 

When my grandfather died in 1969, according to my mother, the relatives descended on his house like vultures. All that she kept was some of his snapshots, a few of which I kept.

About a decade ago, I asked my aunt: what happened to the Elvis records? She said she didn’t know what I was talking about, which was possible, but I still felt slighted.

******

As a teenager, I became obsessed with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Mott the Hoople in equal doses, and went through my Southern rock and glam rock phases.

As an undergrad in the late 1970s, I immediately gravitated to punk and new wave, catching early gigs by the likes of the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Elvis Costello.

I worked at the college newspaper and one of the perks was getting free tickets to a mid-sized concert venue. I was able to land my parents great seats for mom’s favorite singer, Engelbert Humperdinck. She loved the show but hated the opening act, Phoebe Snow, whose jazz-folk was hip enough for me to appreciate.

Music taste-wise, I could meet my mom halfway with Tom Jones, who I always thought was cool with singles like “She’s A Lady” and “What’s New Pussycat?”

My family moved to the suburbs while I was in the sixth grade. One of the kids at the nerds’ lunch table showed me his portable reel-to-reel tape recorder. I was amazed by how it worked. The next year I tried to buy one like it I had seen at a department store with birthday and allowance money, but all they had was a cassette recorder. I bought it, along with a recorded tape of Chuck Berry’s London Sessions, featuring the double-entendre hit “My Ding-A-Ling,” which my 13-year-old self thought was hilarious. But the cassette recorder/player allowed me to record hits played on the radio, like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s.

The first time I heard Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1974 at a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert, my musical horizons expanded dramatically. By college, I realized that the only genre that I didn't find intriguing was opera. To me, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was full of power chords, the real classic rock. All my friends loved Steely Dan, and so did I by the time Aja was released. The Princeton Record Exchange used to set up shop twice a year in the Hofstra University, and I remember buying Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits because I always loved songs like “It Was A Very Good Year,” “Summer Wind,” and “Something Stupid” (with his daughter Nancy Sinatra).

That was a nice bridge to jazz, which I really didn’t start appreciating until I was in my thirties when perusing the bins of Tower Records, I lived a 15-minute walk to their massive NYC downtown store, and start buying the likes of Mingus, Miles, Monk, and Coltrane.

****** 

After I graduated from college, I bought my mom a small cassette boombox for her birthday, and apparently she put it to good use. I discovered her collection of several hundred tapes when I cleaned out the house after my dad died. She had eclectic tastes, and along with the expected Sinatra titles, she also had the likes of pre-Atlantic Aretha Franklin, doo-wop, and 1960s fare that even I could appreciate, like the Beach Boys, British Invasion hits, and Jay and the Americans. She was a sucker for those cheap rack-jobber cassette compilations that proliferated in the late 1980s to mid-1990s when CDs became the most popular format.

As dementia robbed my mom of her mind about a decade ago, she listened with me to a great CD called The Beautiful Old, which featured vintage songs spanning 1805 to 1918 but played by baby-boomer folk and rock artists including Richard Thompson, Graham Parker, Garth Hudson, Kim Richey, and Dave Davies. My mom, then 85, hummed to almost every song and a smile came to her face.

I’m only sorry that she and my dad couldn’t hear Loudon Wainwright III’s 2020 album, I'd Rather Lead A Band, one of my favorites of that year. The entire extremely listenable record is full of great swing orchestra arrangements in the Cole Porter and George Gershwin vein, the type of music you’d hear in a Marx Brothers or Woody Allen film.

 

Something of a music chameleon, Wainwright, now 76, was branded “a new Dylan” in 1970 with his brand of confessional, singer-songwriter folk/rock. I first interviewed him when I was in college. I remember his dad, a renowned journalist for Life magazine, being in the dressing room, and I wish I took a photo of them together. Wainwright, in his music and in his autobiography, dealt with how he’s morphed into his dad. In 2018, he created a one-man show, Surviving Twin, about his dad Loudon Wainwright, Jr., who passed away at age 63.

“When you’re 65, everything seems to be somewhat in the rear-view, or at least in the side-view. Well, not everything, and hopefully your windshield wipers are still working,” Loudon Wainwright III told a journalist in 2012.

******

In the late 1980s, I was surprised to learn that my dad had bought a record because he couldn’t get out of his head a favorite song, “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” After parking his taxicab near the aforementioned Tower Records in Greenwich Village, a store clerk helped him pick out a two-LP set by The Duke Ellington Orchestra.

 

I already knew that my parents’ tastes gravitated towards the big band sound and crooners like Nat King Cole, and I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t have gone for Miles Davis’ bebop and his generation of jazz players. My mom once told me about seeing Frank Sinatra sing with the Dorsey brothers’ orchestra when she was a teenager.

My latest old-music obsession is a record that Sinatra made with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1964, It Might As Well Be Swing. I doubt if either of my parents knew of it because at that time they were too busy raising me and my brother. I came across the title in connection with my teaching at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, where its Institute of Jazz Studies holds Basie’s archive, including music, as well as his stage wardrobe and other items.

 

It’s such a shame that we couldn’t enjoy this album together because it contains some of my favorite songs, including “Fly Me to the Moon,” “More (Theme from Mondo Cane),” “Hello Dolly,” and “The Good Life.”

When I was in my twenties, I once bought at a record fair a button that proclaimed, “It’s Sinatra’s world. We just live in it.” I always thought that was an ironic statement. Now I finally understand it.

A 2015 online study claimed that people stop listening to new music at 33, which partly might explain how baby boomers fueled the rebirth of vinyl as a preferred physical media format.

A new study needs to be done about whether people start listening to their parents’ “old” music.

 

Tony Bennett at a Sony record release party for Cheek to Cheek, the duets album he did with Lady Gaga in 2004. Courtesy of Larry Jaffee.

 

Header image: Johnny Mathis Greatest Hits album, back cover.

Editor’s Note: You might have noticed that some of our show reports happen quite some time after the shows occur. This is because of a variety of factors. It takes time to collate all the notes and photos, our writers are busy and don’t do this stuff full-time – and your undemanding editor doesn’t ask that they get show reports in quickly.

He’s also a stickler for getting the names of folks in photos, so putting the captions together can be quite time-consuming, even considering that show attendees have badges, since there are always people who don’t wear them, and the old “we don’t need no stinking badges!” attitude makes captioning a challenge. Also, the shows have become too big for any one person to cover, so it can be informative to get different perspectives even after the fact. Here then, is a perhaps nostalgic look at CES 2023.

 

This year, we were curious about what the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas would bring to the world of audio. Along with my colleagues Nancy Burlan and John Mulhern III, we found the show somewhat, but not surprisingly, light on audiophile gear. Last year we experienced empty halls, widely-spaced aisles, and most importantly, a requirement for all involved to show proof of vaccination.

This year CES 2023 was crowded, and no one asked for vaccination status, but visitors were all given a pair of COVID test kits. (I used one during to show to test myself, with a negative result.) To be sure, it didn’t seem quite a large an event as the pre-pandemic year before, and we missed the easier navigation provided by the open spaces in 2022, but since they dropped the proof of vaccination requirement, the show felt demonstrably less safer than last year from a medical point of view. Accordingly, we heard that lots of folks returned home with COVID.

 

Mac Edition Radio’s Nancy Burlan modeling the T-shirt of the hour.

 

Thirty minutes’ drive from the Las Vegas Strip is the beautiful Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Skip the casinos on your next trip, and head to Red Rock!

 

One aspect of being a technology reporter is being invited to special press-only shows. These are known as tabletop shows, which isn’t actually all that accurate, because while some vendors may indeed have a single tabletop, others bring cars, motorcycles, boats, and e-bikes. But most have a tabletop or two to display their wares. There are three of these events that the media look forward to during CES. The first is CES Unveiled, put on by the CTA (Consumer Technology Association), the parent organization behind CES. It features a number of pavilions from other countries, including France, The Netherlands, Israel, China, and others. Some are startups, and others are large well-known companies. It’s fun and occurs the night before CES opens. The next two nights host Pepcom’s Digital Experience!, and the ShowStoppers event.

There is often an overlap in content between the three, but the idea is that with a show as vast, complicated, and disorganized as CES, these separate, CES-sanctioned events offer one-stop shopping for journalists and industry analysts, a sort of Best of CES in a single ballroom. Not only is there a huge variety of products and technology on display, you get one-on-one time with the people at the companies who are responsible for dealing with the media, and not salespeople. Still, you need comfortable walking shoes.

Any visitor to CES has to plan the show like a military campaign. You have to think about transportation, shuttle bus schedules, logistics, the time it takes to walk from one hall to another (which is considerable), which all require planning. Some of the vendors know how important this is and arrange for Uber or other transport to pick you up and drop you off where ever you need to be after your appointment. This is more valuable than I can stress. Journalists often have to turn down appointments simply because it can take too long to get to a meeting and can’t waste a chunk of the day. Las Vegas traffic can be terrible.

Another complication is the regrettable decision by some hotel chains to charge for parking, so having a car during CES is great, but figuring out whether a hotel or off-site exhibitor location has free parking makes a difference. Who wants to run up an 80-dollar tab just to make four appointments in a day?

One lovely thing about the press events are an abundance of great food and drink. The biggest CES event is the concert put on by Harman: this year it was Def Leppard. CNET and Monster used to have big events, too, but have discontinued them. Oh well; it was great to see Fleetwood Mac up close and personal.

 

One of the hottest tickets during CES is the annual Harman concert at the Virgin Hotel. This year featured heavy metal favorites Def Leppard, who kept the crowd on their feet.

 

For CES 2023 Harman built a large showcase taking up most of the first floor of the Virgin Hotel, the newly renamed and remodeled former Hard Rock Hotel. We were welcomed by the ebullient Carol Campbell, and Eric Schwartz of NAPCO, both of them consumer electronics legends in their own right. Seeing the high-end components from Harman Luxury Audio Group (ARCAM, Mark Levinson, JBL Synthesis, Lexicon, and Revel) was our goal, and these were showcased in mock-ups of boat cabins, and new cars with serious sound systems and digital displays. JBL had some 1970s-retro-inspired components in their Classic Series, including the SA550 integrated amplifier ($2,000), CD350 CD player ($700), MP350 streamer ($800), and TT350 turntable ($1,000), all of which sounded and looked great. They also showed the wonderful new 4329P Studio Monitor Powered Speaker with built-in wireless streaming, as well as the stylish entry-level-priced $399 SPINNER BT turntable with a gorgeous red platter and rounded dustcover.

 

JBL’s retro system at the Harman exhibit was a treat for the eyes and the ears.

 

Here's the stylish and affordable new JBL Spinner BT turntable.

 

Jim Garrett, Harman’s senior director of product strategy and planning, was clearly enthusiastic about the new gear. Of course, the Luxury Audio Group wouldn’t be luxury without a stunning demo of their Mark Levinson 50^th anniversary ML-50 limited-edition monaural amplifier at a cool $50,000 dollars per pair. Naturally it deserved company, provided by the No. 526 dual-monaural preamplifier ($25,000), No. 519 Audio Player ($25,000), and No. 5105MC Turntable ($8,500), all played through Revel’s flagship F328Be floorstanding loudspeakers ($17,600/pair). Total price, a trifling $126,100 dollars. Some have worried that with Samsung’s purchase of Harman, their commitment to audio might be lessened, but we left convinced Harman was in good hands.

At CES Unveiled we viewed products ranging from the LapLok, a system to secure your laptop, to the author’s favorite form of transportation – the Flying Whales airship – to Stern Pinball, who was there with their James Bond You Only Live Twice machine, and the Timekettle Translator system. GE brought actress Jackie Joseph, the Food Network’s season four Best Baker in America.

 

So, while airships might not seem to embrace audio, Pierre-Yves Foulillen and Antonio Sebastiano Fois of air transport company Flying Whales assured me that listening to music while floating above the clouds is the only way to live. It’s the audiophile’s next frontier!

 

Having grown up taking care of pools in Southern California, this seems to be the season of smart pool cleaners that work underwater using battery power, and AI to memorize the pool contours. The most notable ones were from Aiper, one of which the author has been testing in California.

There were several suppliers of large rechargeable lithium-ion power supplies, including Jackery, Geneverse, Anker, and EcoFlow. Sharp-eyed readers will remember my report on the 2022 New York Audio Show in Copper Issue 174, where one vendor, M-101, used an EcoFlow battery backup to power their system so they didn’t have to rely on questionable hotel power service. The popularity of these systems is growing daily, especially since the larger ones can take the place of a gas-powered generator, without the need for fuel or the production of noise or fumes.

The idea of battery-powered audio gear is certainly not new, and most of us use at least one battery-powered device on a daily basis. With audiophiles running special wiring, dedicated electric services and grounds, and high-quality AC outlets and switches, using a rechargeable battery pack can make perfect sense. (Even if you have an amplifier or monoblocks with high power demands, something like a Stromtank is there to fulfill your needs.)

We heard from many start-up companies during CES Media Days, which are press conferences and presentations, held at the Mandalay Bay before the CES show floor opens, and at CES Unveiled. Mirai/SoundFun showed a unique curved speaker, around four inches wide by a foot or so long, but curved into a sort of 90-degree shape. It was designed to throw an audio signal from a TV or other source without filling the entire room, but rather with a more directional pattern for hearing TV dialog.

 

Mirai/SoundFun was there presenting a speaker that derived its shape from a nautilus, with a curved transducer designed for a narrow distribution pattern for TV listening. Here are Kazuki Kaneko, Hiro Yamaji, and Tsubasa Sunano of SoundFun.

 

Another interesting design was a unique handheld microphone for immersive sound, the SoundSkrit SKR0400 MEMS directional microphone. Its goal was to bring the capabilities of large microphone arrays to a single device. (See Frank Doris’ article on USound in Issue 193 for more information on MEMS micro-speaker technology.) We chatted with SoundSkrit’s founders about the myriad of ways that their product could be used, and as we move toward more and more immersive audio content and devices, it will be interesting to see how these advances work out. The prospect of a tiny, handheld multi-element microphone that was fully tunable was exciting.

 

Sahil Gupta holds the new Soundskrit SKR0400 high-performance MEMS directional microphone, which promises to bring the power of large microphone arrays to a single device. This allows for an effective way to record immersive stereo.

 

We saw nifty technology-based bidets from Brondell [Now there’s a segue! – Ed.], and powerful new networking devices from NETGEAR, including the Orbi quad-band Wi-Fi 6E mesh system, certain to be used in streaming audio systems. XGMI showed a line of affordable, but feature-packed video projectors, perfect for home theater use. One unexpected surprise was the presence of headphone maker Meze Audio, founded in 2011 in Baia Mare, Romania. It wasn’t the only audiophile product at the press events, but stood out, thanks to the presence of none other than founder Antonio Meze in the flesh. I doubt that many attendees realized his small table featured the best-sounding headphones in the room.

Anker was showing its line of wireless earphones as well as its uninterruptible power supplies, and everyone’s favorite data storage vendor, Other World Computing, was packed all night, showing all sorts of high-capacity drives for folks to consider. Considering audiophiles’ desire to store terabytes of music files, the need for speedy storage coupled with fast error-free networking is one solution to happiness. SanDisk, Kingston, and Western Digital were there as well. 

We headed over for a visit to the Central Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center, to the Leiyin Audio booth. If you’ve never heard of them, you might have heard of their brands, including xDuoo, Topping, Shanling, Dunu, FiiO, Moondrop, Tanchjim, and SMSL, among others. Even more surprising was that Noel Lee, the Head Monster was there. I will be evaluating some of their products in the near future for Mac Edition Radio. The growing importance of Chinese hi-fi can’t be understated, especially for a new generation of younger audio enthusiasts who want nothing to do with large, expensive boxes, even if hand-crafted from milled aluminum.

 

Ever wonder where Topping, SMSL, and other products come from? Well, Ruxia Wang, and Shuzeng Wang of Leiyin Audio of Shenzhen, China, are partly responsible.

 

A few aisles over we visited our friends at Audio-Technica, showing off the fun retro throwback Sound Burger portable turntable. For Mac Edition Radio’s 2022 Holiday Gift Guide, we included headphones from TWT Audio, which differentiated themselves from the many other headphones on the market by virtue of their low price ($30 or so), and the fact that they were designed for the K-12 market, with nearly indestructible construction (and maybe for sexagenarian magazine editors). TWT Audio still wanted these inexpensive headphones to deliver high-quality audio, so they hired a well-known engineer to voice them.

One of the most interesting NAS (Network Attached Storage) solutions we saw was the Amber system from LatticeWork, and founder Pantaras Sutardja was on hand to discuss the product. As one of the founders of electronics giant Marvell Technology, Sutardja felt that the current approaches were lacking and created Amber as a response.

A few rooms over, Victrola had a suite filled with good-sounding gear. The company’s Don Inmon was following through on the promise he made a few years ago to elevate Victrola from a mass-market budget brand with audio you had to apologize for, and the $800 Victrola Stream Carbon was a Sound & Vision magazine Editor’s Pick, showing how far he’s taken the brand. Brane Audio demonstrated their unique small Bluetooth speaker with a radically new subwoofer design that practically shook the room, yet wasn’t overtly boomy or distorted.

 

Don Inmon of Victrola is finding success with his efforts.

 

It wasn’t all hard work. Our friends at Catalyst Case threw a dinner at Rollin Smoke Barbeque, a small place with great food. No work talk, just food, drinks, friendship, and fun. My trophy date was Bree Fowler, formerly of Associated Press, Consumer Reports, and now CNET. Bree also forced herself to come with us to the Def Leppard concert.

The last day of CES found me driving alone (Nancy and John had both flown back to Philadelphia) out to the expansive Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where the Indy Autonomous Challenge was set to run. Unfortunately, it was a bit of bust, as technology glitches kept the cars grounded for most of the time I was there. There were a few high-speed runs though.

Still, it was great to see the track, and teams from all over competing with these high-powered examples, even though it showed that full autonomous self-driving vehicles aren’t really ready for prime time yet. But the event did demonstrate how much work has been accomplished. And despite my enthusiasm for electric vehicles, there’s nothing quite like the sound and smell of petrol-fueled race cars passing by at 200 miles per hour. 

It was good to see some audio vendors at the Las Vegas Convention Center, but we missed the previous days of main show floor and The Venetian suites full of great gear and fun folks. Still, it’s clear that CES in general is on an upswing, maybe smaller in scale, but vibrant and alive. While we didn’t see as much conventional or even desktop audio products, we did see a large amount of personal audio devices, a category which is slated to grow next year. The area known as EurekaPark, which was held at the Venetian Expo (formerly the Sands Expo and Convention Center) was created as an affordable way to showcase startups and ideas, had plenty of folks with audio-related products, and promises to feature more next year, with even some hints of audiophile gear in the works.

Here are more images from CES 2023.

 

John Mulhern III from Mac Edition Radio is a tough cookie when it comes to being impressed by tech announcements.

 

Salome Darmon and David Illouz of deeBee provided some French style with their products.

 

Here are Norbert Frassa and Chuck Joiner of Mac Voices, and Dave Hamilton, John F. Braun and Pete Harmon of Mac Geek Gab. These are among your First Amendment advocates in the press!

 

Canon figured out the best possible way to approach the problem of needing teleprompters: just use the wall in the back of the room.

 

Shannon Shamoon and Jennifer Adams from Poly/HP were showing off their latest Poly Voyager Free 60 headsets and wireless earbuds.

 

Want to store your digital music and photo files? Here’s the team from Other World Computing (OWC): Sam Mestman, Alex Pantos, Teddy Mazrin, and Larry O’Connor.

 

With clean power on everyone’s minds, Jackery was there showing off their latest solar-powered products. Simon Chow, Tony Zhang, Mary Katherine Lim, Tracy Wang, and Sabrina Bai all had electrifying smiles!

 

During the pandemic, many folks came to love bidets from Brondell. Here, Kathryn Emery from Be The Best Home demonstrated her enthusiasm for the product line.

 

Ari Morgulean and Barbara Reindl showcase their XGIMI, a new entry into the projector field that is said to offer superior audio and video at an attractive price point.

 

Martin Komal, Leng Chhoeu, and Shealyn Johnson of Kingston Technology. Many of the photos the author made were done using Kingston Canvas React Plus UHS-II SD memory cards.

 

Mr. Meze himself!  Antonio Meze represented high-end audio at the Pepcom Digital Experience!.

 

The ever-popular Urbanista headphones were on display, presented by Monica Rohleder and Tuomas Lonka.

 

Over at the newly renamed and remodeled Virgin Hotel, we were greeted by the ebullient Carol Campbell at the large Harman takeover of the first floor.

 

Jim Garrett of Harman, discussing the retro-beautiful new JBL SA550 Integrated Amplifier.

 

The large Harman suite included products for automotive, nautical, personal, luxury, and lifestyle. Pretty snazzy!

 

Manabu Aoki of Audio-Technica U.S. was on hand to discuss their new product line.

 

Many photographers are excited about software from Luminar Neo. Robert Vanelli and Anna Koval were all smiles.

 

Amber by LatticeWork offers a new approach to NAS (Network Attached Storage). Dr. Pantas Sutardja (Co-Founder of chip giant Marvell Technology) shows how Amber works, to U.S. Olympic medalist Gabby Thomas, who was there representing SPRYNG, a muscle recovery tool.

 

Brane Audio had a unique new product, a small Bluetooth speaker with impressive amounts of bass. Here Joe Pinkerton holds up the business end of a prototype.

 

The author thought it might be wise to check for COVID-19, and fortunately he tested negative. CES provided all attendees with free test kits.

 

It was good times and good eats at the Rollin Smoke Barbeque party held by Catalyst, maker of those durable phone cases. Our hosts were June Lai (Founder of Catalyst) and Chris Herbert (Catalyst), with Bree Fowler (CNET) in the middle.

 

Bree Fowler enjoying Def Leppard at the Harman concert.

 

The day after CES closed, the press was invited out to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, to view the Indy Autonomous Challenge. Here is a car waiting for its chance to do some 200 miles per hour passing.

 

Header image: The Mark Levinson 50^th Anniversary ML-50 limited edition monaural amplifier. All images courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Some composers are particularly tuned in to the eras that led up to their own. Among the best examples is Benjamin Britten (1913 – 1976), who often seemed to channel the entire musical history of his native England, even going back to the early Medieval period. Yet he used those pre-existing ideas in ways that always sounded completely original. Several recent recordings serve as a reminder of Britten’s skill in a range of genres.

Britten, as a violist himself, had a great love of string quartet music. He numbered three of his quartets. There are also two early ones without numbers, one written when he was only 18. Unsure of its quality, he tucked that early attempt into a drawer and didn’t pull it out again until the end of his life. He gave it a revision (but no opus number) and had it published in 1974, calling it simply String Quartet in D major. His F major quartet, composed in 1928 when he was 14, did not see publication until 1995, almost 20 years after his death.

The Quartet No. 3 in G major was Britten’s last completed work. It is dense and gorgeous, a major challenge for any ensemble that attempts it. On The Complete Warner Classics Edition, which includes all the Belcea Quartet’s recordings from 2000 – 2008, that ensemble plays many of the Britten works (along with quartets by many other composers, several of whom were also active in the 20^th century, such as Dutilleux and Bartók). Although the Belcea left off Britten’s un-numbered D major quartet, they did include his 3 Divertimenti, for string-quartet instrumentation.

Founded in London in 1994 by a Czech violinist and a Polish violist, the Belcea Quartet has a distinctively rich, powerful sound that makes it ideal for Britten’s chamber music. They made an interesting choice at the original release of these recordings: they hired a film team, so there are videos of them playing these pieces.

The opening movement of Quartet No. 3, called “Duets,” has remarkable density, yet Britten’s signature ability to write fluid, lyrical lines never forsakes him. The Belcea plays with clarity and purpose.

 

Britten’s Quartet No. 2 in C major, has an entirely different personality from his final work. Here it does not hide the sweetness under the stress. But he also explores contrasting textures to keep the music from becoming sentimental. The opening movement, marked “Allegro calmo senza rigore” (Allegro, calm and without strictness) starts with river-like fluidity that condenses at unexpected moments into wild rapids and jagged rocks.

The Belcea is ready at every bend in that river, changing their delivery from phrase to phrase with complete confidence and accuracy. (And kudos to them for managing to hire a film team to capture their playing of these albums. It’s a welcome addition to the listener’s experience, although surely the cost would be prohibitive for many groups.)

 

Another new compilation release of previous recordings is the Emperor Quartet’s Britten: The Music for String Quartet on BIS records. A British ensemble, the Emperor originally put out these recordings between 2010 and 2014. The best thing about this recording is its thoroughness. Besides the numbered and unnumbered quartets and the 3 Divertimenti, the Emperor also recorded the four-movement Miniature Suite, the Quartettino, and a string-quartet arrangement of the Simple Symphony (originally for string orchestra).

The Miniature Suite was composed when Britten was 15, in 1929. It is testament to his natural talent. Not surprisingly, at that age he was better at borrowing known compositional styles than at sounding unique. The opening movement, “Novelette,” for example, comes across as a tribute to Beethoven. But it’s an astonishing achievement for a teen.

 

Likewise, the unnumbered F Major quartet gives the sense of a young composer copying his musical heroes, as skillfully done as it may be. Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert – all are acknowledged in the opening Allegro vivace e con brio movement. It’s wonderful to hear these early works by Britten. Unfortunately, the Emperor Quartet lacks the focus and precision of the Belcea Quartet. The diffuse sound quality of the recording is also problematic.

 

String quartets make up only a small portion of Britten’s output. These days, he is best known for his operas, chief among them the masterful Peter Grimes. That work, premiered in 1945, has not enjoyed any new recordings in the past couple of years. (The most recent one I could find was the Chandos release from 2020, with Edward Gardner conducting the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Stuart Skelton, well worth listening to on high-res streaming.) However, there is a new recording of the best-known orchestral excerpt from Peter Grimes, the breathtaking beautiful and haunting 4 Sea Interludes.

They are included on Fratta: Orchestral Music by Stravinsky, Britten, and Scriabin, a release from Brilliant Classics. It is the debut album by Italian conductor Gianna Fratta, here leading the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana. It’s fair to say that Fratta’s career is just getting rolling; she has conducted some mid-sized American orchestras but mainly worked in Europe. I hope that changes, and she gets more opportunities worldwide.

Her interpretation of the second interlude, “Sunday Morning,” has the right fairylike qualities, evoking dappled sunlight that sometimes surprises us by shooting through the leaves in blinding rays. Britten uses polyrhythms to put the various sections of the orchestra into separate worlds, like many individual sources of light shining at the same time. Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana is wonderfully musical and stays in control despite the ease with which this movement can tip into chaos.

 

Although it’s outside the purview of this column, Fratta deserves accolades for her performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which opens the same album with appropriately earth-shaking power. 

Beyond opera, Britten wrote a great deal of vocal music for solo voice. His life partner, Peter Pears, was a tenor, and some of Britten’s greatest music was written for him to sing (including the title role of Peter Grimes). Among those works are several for tenor and string orchestra. A new recording on Harmonia Mundi by tenor Andrew Staples explores these pieces with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Daniel Harding conducts, and Christopher Parkes plays horn in the fascinating Serenade for Horn, Tenor, and Strings.

The album also includes the Nocturne for Tenor, 7 Obbligato Instruments, and Strings and Les Illuminations for Tenor and String Orchestra. That last work, premiered in 1940, uses the French poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.

The second of those songs is called “Villes,” describing a fictitious and spectacular city greater even than London or Paris. Staples’ has a voice very similar to Pears’ – intense and rounded, with tight vibrato – making him an ideal presenter of this music. Harding leads the orchestra through the wild details of the city’s architecture. The song is a short but brilliant gem. 

 

Britten had a prodigious gift for orchestration (some of us grew up listening to his A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, so we know). That skill is nowhere more apparent than in the gorgeous Nocturne, premiered in 1958. It was the composer’s last orchestral song cycle. Here is the fourth movement, “Midnight's Bell,” with a text by Jacobean poet Thomas Middleton. Harding and Staples’ interpretation is almost painfully delicate.

 

If the Nocturne had been the only piece Benjamin Britten wrote, he would still be worth remembering for generations. Luckily for us, he was very prolific.

 

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Hans Wild/High Fidelity/public domain.

For some reason, the people involved with the manufacturing of vinyl records are rather stoic types. The rare occasion when they are in a talkative mood, they mostly talk about the manufacturing process and equipment. They are not often talking about what happens after the records have been manufactured, the actual reproduction of these records, for pleasure or for the most critical step of manufacturing: quality control.

 

Modified Thorens TD 160 with SME 3009 and van den Hul MC-Two cartridge, with a test record.

 

What follows is the story of the restoration, modification, assembly, calibration and testing, of some components, which, if used properly, can result in a highly accurate phonograph disk reproduction system.

This system is now being used along with a few other systems offering similarly accurate performance, as a reference for the evaluation of vinyl record manufacturing equipment and in particular, disk mastering systems and the resulting records they produce.

Being involved in the design, development, testing, manufacturing, and repair of disk mastering equipment and also cutting masters for vinyl record manufacturing, we need some reliable reproduction systems for our measurements, listening tests and even listening pleasure.

The Thorens TD 160 is a highly regarded, classic turntable, which was manufactured in Lahr, Germany, from 1972 to 1988. In 1976 the TD 160 Mk II was introduced and the TD 160 Super arrived in 1982. All variants are simple and well-designed, offering a very high level of performance straight out of the box. All versions come fitted with the Thorens TP16 tonearm, in one of its implementations, which is already quite decent, but there is ample room for improvement.

 

The platter is a two-piece zinc alloy casting, with a precise shaft press-fitted to it. The center spindle measures exactly 7.24 mm, ensuring a tight fit in the record hole for accurately centered reproduction according to the IEC60098:1987 standard for phonograph records.

 

 

The center bearing is comprised of a couple of plain bronze bearings in a housing, terminating in an accurately machined cone which engages a matching cone at the bottom of the shaft. No ball! Friction and noise are exceptionally low, while accuracy is high, as expected from a Swiss manufacturer (at least this was where they started!) of precision parts.

 

 

The motor is a 16-pole synchronous AC unit, with a clutch pulley to ensure a smooth start. By now, the original capacitors on these units have developed a rather high leakage current, causing the motor spindle to vibrate as soon as it is plugged in with the switch in the "0" position. Just touch the top of the pulley and you can feel it. This is not normal, and can easily be rectified.

The platter is belt driven and the two-step motor pulley is configured to offer the correct ratio for 33 1/3 and 45 rpm.

 

 

Through the years, we have taken apart and rebuilt, repaired and/or modified all variants of the TD 160. The early version, called simply the TD 160, had the same 10 mm shaft and bearings as the TD 125. It came with the early version of the TP16 tonearm, with the TP60 detachable headshell, same as was fitted to the TD 125 Mk II. All TD 160 variants have the same platter and motor as the Thorens TD 125 and TD 126, including the TD 125 Mk II and TD 126 Mk II.

 

Thorens TD 160 Mk II with TP16 Mk II tonearm and Stanton 881S cartridge, playing the Naxatras EP.

 

The TD 160 Mk II had a smaller diameter platter shaft, retaining the same cone arrangement. The bearing unit is configured a bit differently and the housing is also slightly different. The motor remains the same but the clutch pulley has some minor improvements. It is fitted with the TP16 Mk II Isotrack tonearm, which features a detachable wand called the TP62, instead of a detachable headshell, thereby reducing the effective mass of the tonearm to just 7.5 g. By comparison, the effective mass of the early TP16 with the TP60 headshell was 16.5 g!

The TD 160 Super came with the TP16 Mk III tonearm, had a different plinth and a damped motor plate.

 

 

All variants can occasionally be found nowadays hiding in attics and basements in various stages of deterioration, awaiting to be found and lovingly restored.

The tonearm we chose for this project is an SME 3009 Series II Improved, an evolution of the earlier 3009 dating from 1975, with a much more sophisticated decoupling of the counterweight for better resonance control. This tonearm was widely used in professional applications where sound quality was of prime importance. This was a substantial improvement over the TP16. The SME 3009 was introduced in 1959 and was a hugely influential design.

The SME 3009 Series II Improved, with a fixed headshell (superior in performance to the removable headshell version) has an effective mass of only 6.5 g. The maximum vertical tracking force (VTF) it was intended for was 1.75 g.

Looking for a moving coil cartridge that would be a good match for this tonearm was not an easy task. Many manufacturers nowadays are opting for low-compliance designs requiring a VTF of over 2 g. The typical match for this tonearm was the Shure V15 range of moving magnet cartridges. We do use a Shure V15 III on another SME 3009 tonearm on a different turntable, as a reference, so for this system we wanted a moving-coil cartridge of high performance.

 

 

The van den Hul MC-Two specifications made it seem like a potential candidate, so we decided to give it a try and see how it measured. This is a handcrafted moving-coil cartridge, designed and built by Mr Aalt Jouk van den Hul in The Netherlands. It is fitted with a boron cantilever and a nude diamond type VDH-I stylus, 3 x 85 μm, also designed by A. J. van den Hul and bearing his initials (VDH). The van den Hul MC-Two is a higher output version of the van den Hul MC-One. The entire range of van den Hul cartridges are very highly regarded, but the specifications appeared a bit optimistic at first glance. Frequency range 5 Hz – 50 kHz, channel balance <0.5 dB and channel separation >35 dB? Well, we'll see about that when we get to the measurements...

 

FloKaSon test record, VDH MC-Two cartridge and SME 3009 tonearm.

 

We used the FloKaSon Testtone Record Vol.1, along with a few custom test records cut by J. I. Agnew for our laboratory measurements. With these, we could accurately adjust the cartridge/tonearm combination and measure its performance.

 

FloKaSon test record, oscilloscope and accessories.

 

Starting with the lowest value of VTF that the manufacturer recommends, 1.3 g, the channel separation was an appalling 12 dB, so this was promptly increased to 1.5 g. Better, but not quite there yet. This was just a quick observation on the scope while reproducing the first left channel 1 kHz tone. Adjusting tonearm height, overhang, lateral balance, lateral alignment, and then fine-tuning the VTF along with the anti-skating force, while reproducing the different bands to check different aspects of performance, took a few hours of intense concentration.

 

Test record on Thorens TD 160.

 

At this stage it would be appropriate to make a point about tonearm height adjustment and how this relates to vertical tracking angle (VTA) and stylus rake angle (SRA) adjustment. Arm height adjustment serves to make the tonearm wand parallel to the record surface with the cartridge down at the final vertical tracking force (VTF) setting, so the dynamic parameters work as designed. The cartridge VTA is 22 degrees and the SRA is 1 degree on this particular model. These are defined by the designer of the cartridge and the relationship between them is fixed. Which means, if we tilt the cartridge forward to increase VTA to 25 degrees, SRA will also increase to 4 degrees.

Considering the length of the tonearm, increasing its height at the pivot will not have a substantial effect on VTA/SRA! To effect a change of even 1 degree in VTA/SRA, the tonearm height would have to change by over 4 mm, which is not a good idea.

If it is required to deviate significantly from the design values of VTA/SRA of a given cartridge, this can only be done correctly by means of a special headshell or mounting adapter.

We have made such mounting adapters, allowing the continuous adjustment of cartridge body tilt for any desired value of VTA/SRA.

So, once the several iterations of adjust, measure, adjust some more, measure even more, were completed, we had the following results:

 

Frequency Response:                                        12 Hz-50 kHz +/-1 dB
Tracking Ability:                                                 70 μm
Channel Balance:                                               0.4 dB
Channel Separation:                                           28 dB
Output Voltage:                                                  2.3 mVrms
Primary System Resonance:                              10.5 Hz
Rumble Weighted (DIN 45539):                          -78 dB
Wow & Flutter Weighted Peak (DIN 45507):       0.03%

 

These are quite close to the specifications offered by the manufacturer, apart from the channel separation. However, it should be noted that it is extremely difficult to measure anything over 29 – 30 dB of channel separation on any cartridge using a test record. This is a topic for an entire book on the accuracy of different measurement methods. Specifications stating over 30 dB of channel separation do not necessarily mean that you will ever get to see or hear that in practice when reproducing a record.

The tracking ability was at the lower end of the published specifications, which stated 70 – 80 μm. This is adequate for most practical purposes. Few cartridges tested thus far have actually passed the 100 μm tracking ability band. These include the Shure V15 in different variants, the EMT TSD-15 (freshly reconditioned with new suspension) and an Audio-Technica AT12XE. Most decent ones go up to 70 – 80 μm, but no further. They can still sound great though.

The channel balance was impressively accurate, mostly within 0.2 dB throughout the entire range, with the worst points going down to 0.4 dB, exceeding the published figure of 0.5 dB! This is exemplary performance, very rarely encountered in any kind of real-world transducer. These figures really test the limits of the measurement equipment and the skill of their operator.

As for the frequency response, this is indeed very impressive and confirms the specifications. There is, however, a small catch. Notice how the original specs state 5 Hz while our measurements show 12 Hz? Well, the cartridge alone can probably go down to 5 Hz. However, it is normally fitted to a tonearm. The cartridge cantilever has a certain compliance, given as 28 μm/mN, statically measured. It also has a certain mass. The manufacturer states 8.2 g, but we measured 7.95 g. Add to that the mounting screws, finger lift, headshell, effective tonearm mass, etc, and we are at around 17 g.

The compliant suspension of a mass results in an oscillatory system, fortunately damped to some extent. The resonant frequency of this oscillatory system can be predicted mathematically:

where M = Mass
C = Compliance

To make it more convenient, we could use M directly in g instead of kg and C in μm/mN, by rearranging it as follows:

 

Where M' = Mass in grams
C' = Compliance in μm/mN

 

If we were to use the static compliance value of 28 μm/mN, we would get an fres of 7.3 Hz, which would be incorrect. The cartridge is meant to reproduce a spinning record, not a stationary one, so we are interested in the dynamic compliance, not the static compliance. The static value is simpler and faster to measure though, so this is what most manufacturers will offer.

Taking an educated guess, we could assume that a static compliance of 28 μm/mN would translate to a dynamic compliance of half this value, so 14 μm/mN or somewhere around there. This brings us to 10.36 Hz, which is exactly where we would ideally want to be. A tonearm/cartridge resonance of approximately 10 Hz is recommended, which could be stretched to a range from 8 Hz to 12 Hz in most cases, without side effects.

An effect of this resonance is that it results in a mechanical high-pass filter, attenuating below the resonant frequency. This prevents the tonearm/cartridge combination from achieving a flat response down to 5 Hz.

But, what if we add more mass? Yes, we could do that and get a response flat to 5 Hz, by lowering the resonant frequency. Unfortunately, records are not perfectly flat, so if we were to do that we would get a lot of strange audible side effects which are magically tuned out once the resonance frequency reaches or exceeds 8 Hz. Exceeding 12 Hz, on the other hand, unnecessarily interferes with the phase response and increases the risk of the needle jumping if the resonance is excited by recorded sounds. As an example, the lowest fundamental of a pipe organ can be as low as 16 Hz, which can be recorded and even reproduced, as long as the tonearm/cartridge resonance is kept substantially lower. Which is how the value of 10 Hz came to be. On this particular system, the resonance was measured at 10.5 Hz, which is close enough to our predicted value of 10.36 Hz to verify the dynamic compliance assumption.

Another noteworthy aspect of performance was the rumble, exceeding the Thorens specifications of -72 dB. The bearing and motor were reconditioned and freshly lubricated with special high performance lubricants, the capacitors were replaced, the belt was replaced with a high performance type, the clutch pulley was reconditioned, and the motor was powered by a quartz-locked power supply unit, offering a dead-stable 50 Hz, clean and pure.

Moreover, rumble measurements via tonearm and cartridge will of course give slightly different readings if a different tonearm or cartridge is used. We used the silent grooves of test records (pressed vinyl) and test lacquer disks we cut in-house for such measurements. The figure of -78 dB was obtained with the final setup, including the SME tonearm and vdH cartridge, after approximately 30 minutes of running at 45 RPM. The measurements were repeated at both speeds.

 

Lincoln Mayorga plays Brahms, Handel, Chopin, via the Thorens TD160, SME 3009 and VDH Two.

 

Finally, when the adjustment and calibration have been successful, the system is ready to reproduce some real music!

 

Sheffield Lab direct-to-disk recording, SME tonearm and vdH cartridge.

 

Sheffield Lab 4: Lincoln Mayorga plays Brahms, Handel, Chopin is
This is a direct-to-disk recording by Doug Sax, recorded on May 18 – 29, 1976 in Wylie Chapel of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, California. The piano was a Mason and Hamlin, tuned by Keith Albright. The disc was plated by Richard "Slim" Doss at AFM Engineering and pressed at Teldec, in Germany.

A stunning recording of a beautiful performance, this record really demonstrates what the disk medium is capable of capturing, as well as what Lincoln Mayorga was capable of playing, with no technical assistance.

 

Thorens TD160 B Mk II, SME 3009 Series II improved, VDH MC Two and experimental electronic music.

 

Moving on to experimental electronic music, to test how this system can cope with the strange waveforms of electronically generated sounds.

 

Drunk Confident – Broken Machine on the TD 160.

 

Drunk Confident – Broken Machine was recorded from 2015 to 2017 by Taren McCallan-Moore in Cambridge and Canterbury, UK. Instruments used included a Marantz CP-430, Superscope C-205, Formanta Polivoks, Moog Prodigy, Roland TR-606, Roland CR-5000, Wem Copicat and a Hsinghai upright piano. Field recordings were also made in and around Canterbury, Cambridge, London and New York, on cassette tape.

The master lacquer disks were cut by J. I. Agnew at Magnetic Fidelity. It was plated and pressed at Pallas in Germany. It's highly-recommended listening for a detailed and highly analytical insight on machine-made sounds can be successfully combined with manipulated natural sounds.

 

Naxatras III playing on a Thorens TD160.

 

Moving on to rock music, here's a natural-sounding and dynamic recording of a band that can cover the entire range from whispering soft to screeching loud.

 

Naxatras - III

 

Recorded in 2017 on analog tape at Magnetic Fidelity by J. I. Agnew, it's an all-analog project from start to finish. The masters were cut directly from the 1/4" master tape at Magnetic Fidelity, and plated and pressed at Pallas.

It's a fine performance by Naxatras that proves that multitrack recording is not necessary for an excellent rock recording, and neither is any form of digital equipment. The uninhibited dynamics of the music, particularly impressive on the drums, make good use of the dynamic real estate available on the disk medium. This release is a triple-LP, keeping the sides short and sound quality high.

 

Naxatras recording III, from left to right: Filon Geropoulos (guest musician), John Vagenas, J. I. Agnew (engineer), John Delias.

 

Test setup with Thorens TD 160.

 

Agnew Analog Reference Instruments supplies disk recording and reproducing equipment for the recording and disk manufacturing industry, broadcasting facilities, archives, the sound restoration and preservation sector, and the discerning audiophile. They also offer engineering consulting services for equipment manufacturers, restoration and modification of high-quality phonograph record reproducing equipment, custom test records, custom precision parts, and calibration/measurement services for demanding applications. In addition, Agnew Analog offers disk recording lathes and complete disk mastering systems.

 

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Hans Dinkelberg. All other images courtesy of Agnew Analog Reference Instruments.

This article originally appeared on the Agnew Analog Reference Instruments blog and is used by permission.